Here’s ten books for those of you that are still firmly ensconced in the golden, hazy last days of summer.

Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn

A guilt-ridden attorney winds up agreeing to pretend to be the fiancee of a man whose family her former firm treated terribly in a wrongful death case in the angstiest take on fake dating that you’ll ever read, from an author with a true gift for conveying emotion with every sentence. Big chunks of this book take place at a summer camp and the sense of the season is just as beautifully done as the enemies-to-lovers romance and deep exploration of healing and friendship.

Kakigori Summer by Emily Itami

A bittersweet and shimmering story about three far-flung sisters still struggling with their mother’s death in very different ways who reunite for a summer on the Japanese coast. The sense of place that Itami creates, as the book journeys from Tokyo to the Japanese countryside, is astonishingly vivid and I loved how carefully she renders the daily rituals of family life. The next best thing to going on vacation.

The Lord of Stariel by AJ Lancaster

This gaslamp romantic fantasy set on a magical estate that chooses its own lord is witty, winning, and overflows with charm. I was enchanted by the skillful world-building, the warmth of Lancaster’s prose, and the way that these characters’ feelings are treated with just as much care and significance as the fae intrigue and magical maneuverings. Even better, it’s the first of a series (that I still need to finish!) if you’re looking to end the summer with a binge read.

Forever Your Rogue by Erin Langston

A young widow enlists a wayward rogue to be her fake fiance for a summer at her estate in this joyous historical romance that filled the Lisa Kleypas-shaped hole in my heart when I first read it all the way back in 2023. Langston draws on the classic tropes of historical romance while also making them feel new, fresh, and completely rooted in these characters. Her writing is wonderfully assured and there’s sentence after sentence that’ll make you stop and sigh with pleasure.

Marry Me, Juliet series by Jodi McAllister

The Bachelor franchise may be in its death throes but this delightful series set around a very dramatic—some might say the most dramatic season ever—of a Bachelor-esque show has enough humor, perfectly swoony love stories, and sharp yet loving satire of the Bachelor universe to more than fill in the gap in your summer viewing. As a bonus, you could go right on to McAllister’s wonderful An Academic Affair right as the back-to-school rush hits.

The Artist by Lucy Steeds (aka The Artist and the Feast in the US)

In a France still recovering from World War I, an aspiring journalist, a legendary artist, and the niece who makes the artist’s work possible collide over the course of a summer. This book hums with tension, especially when Steeds writes about the point where ripeness tips over into decay, and the prose is particularly luscious when depicting the ins and outs of the creative process.

The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson

A professional baseball player falls for his heckler in this messy and sincere love story that’s suffused with a true love of baseball. (Thompson is writing another baseball romance next year and I cannot wait.) I’d particularly recommend this if you’ve been looking for a sports romance with a soft and emotional hero, a heroine who’s not perfect but who’s learning, and steamy scenes that feel grounded in the characters.

The Three Dahlias by Katy Watson

Three actresses who’ve all played the same fictional detective, Dahlia Lively, team up to solve a mystery on the set of the latest Dahlia Lively movie adaptation. This is an extremely fun homage to the Golden Age mystery, from the country house setting to the excerpts from various Dahlia Lively mystery to the eccentric cast of suspects. There’s five mysteries in the series so far, if you’re as charmed by these characters as I was.

The Wedding by Dorothy West

A wealthy Black family that summers on Martha’s Vineyard prepares for a much-discussed interracial wedding in this family saga in miniature and nuanced portrait of a society on the verge of immense change. I loved West’s long, lush sentences and knack for flipping between time periods in the space of a few paragraphs. A particularly perfect seasonal read if you’ve visited New England anytime lately.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

A historian exhausted from being sent back and forth in time is sent to the Victorian era to help solve an incongruity when a fellow historian brings something forward in time. This is a sparkling time travel adventure about chaos theory, classic mystery novels, unexpected romance, very good dogs, and slightly less well behaved cats. I adore Willis’ sense of humor and sharp yet affectionate take on human absurdities.

Let me know in the comments what you’re reading for the end of summer!

Currently reading: Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold, wherein Lieutenant Miles Vorkosigan is forced to confront the end of an era when things begin to go subtly wrong in Imperial Security.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• The tarot exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum, which combines beautiful historical tarot cards with equally mesmerizing modern takes on the tarot deck and art inspired by its imagery.

• Celebrating a friend’s bachelorette with crafting, pizza, and belting out show tunes at Marie’s Crisis in Greenwich Village.

• Seeing Moulin Rouge! on Broadway before it closes and remembering how much I love this gloriously over-the-top musical.

All good bookstore crawls require proper fuel. Therefore, we started off with a stop for a sweet treat at the Brooklyn Farmacy, an adorably retro ice cream shop that does sundaes, shakes, and egg creams. It also happens to be close to Freebird Books, an eclectic and cozy used bookstore that we didn't visit on this trip but could be a perfect nearby stop if you're a used bookstore connoisseur. Their selection of books about New York is especially good!

From there, we strolled over to the beloved Cobble Hill location of Books Are Magic, owned by author Emma Straub. I love how light-filled and welcoming the store always feels, their wide-ranging staff picks, and the excellent merch selection. (I know I don't need another mug in my life but surely I could make room for a pink Books Are Magic diner mug?) I didn't pick up any romance novels here but I did succumb to a very pretty edition of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and a copy of Cathedrals by Claudia Pineiro, an Argentine crime writer whose books come highly recommended.

We also stopped at the Talea taproom to check out the adorable Unrequited Books popup, complete with stickers and an intriguing selection of romantasy, and to grab a drink before we embarked on the longest walk of our journey. Talea is a NY-based brewery and their Cobble Hill taproom serves wine, beer, coffee, cocktails, sourdough pizza, and other snacks including the giant soft pretzels I spotted on multiple plates throughout the taproom. This would also be a perfect stop if you wanted to wend your way from Books Are Magic to the downtown Brooklyn McNally Jackson (aka the nicest bookstore in a mall I have ever seen), the Center for Fiction, and Greenlight Bookstore.

We wrapped up our bookstore crawl by walking over to The Ripped Bodice, the glorious temple to romance novels in Park Slope. (It was closed by the time we got there but Marbre madeleines would be a delicious snack if you're going between Cobble Hill and Park Slope.) The Ripped Bodice has a wide selection of contemporary, historical, fantasy, and YA romances as well as some non-romance titles and I find something new to read every single time I stop in. If you're a romance reader or even simply romance curious, you must visit the next time you're in New York. As a bonus, they sell adorable stickers—how gorgeous is this Pride and Prejudice sticker?!—and romance trope hats that I covet. I bought a Sherry Thomas historical romance and a recent sapphic paranormal romance that I’d been eyeing

Our book crawl ended there but if you're so inclined, it's a thirty minute walk from The Ripped Bodice to Love & Legends, the fantasy, romantasy, and sci-fi bookstore in Prospect Heights. I particularly love their fantasy and sci-fi classics section and spin on Blind Date with a Book, where you can toss a giant D&D die to select a mystery title.

If you want to plan a bookstore crawl of your own, these are my top tips:

• Make a map first! Locate a cluster of bookstores within walking or easy public transit distance of each other and plot out a path from store to store.

• Build in stops for snacks. Locate a bakery, cafe, or lunch spot in between bookstores where you can rehydrate, refuel, and rest before you embark on more book browsing.

• Bring (or acquire) a sturdy canvas tote with wide straps to hold all your purchases.

• Have a loose list of titles you're looking for but don't be too prescriptive. The unexpected discovery is the best part of any bookstore crawl and has led to some of my favorite reads!

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Currently reading: The Luckiest Lady in London by Sherry Thomas, for my romance book club. No one writes angst as beautifully as she does.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• The Winter's Tale at Free Shakespeare in the Park! I got to see a new-to-me Shakespeare play and Lily Rabe and Raul Esparza (both excellent).

• A concert at Radio City Music Hall, my favorite iconic NYC venue.

• And bountiful farmers’ market produce, including enormous heirloom tomatoes, black grapes, and perfectly ripe peaches the size of my face.

The writing in Abby Offsides is great. The banter is sharp, the narrative voice vivid and distinctive from the very first page, and the journey that our heroine Abby, who moves to the UK to work for a soccer team after a devastating breakup, goes on is thoughtfully and wonderfully done. I loved how beautifully McCallie writes about the powerful feelings that come along with sports fandom, the bond Abby forms with the team, and the achingly slow burn between her and star midfielder Lachlan. But I also wanted to scream at these characters for a significant chunk of the book, because Lachlan is married, even if his marriage is seemingly reaching its end, and this is a romance about two people having an emotional affair. I can forgive a lot in a romance novel and yet I never quite forgave this.

To its credit, the book never shies away from the fact that this is what’s happening between Abby and Lachlan. When the crash comes, it comes hard. The third-act breakup (of sorts) lasts for about 70 or 80 pages and uses every single one of them. Abby acknowledges that they’ve both done something wrong and goes on a deeply satisfying journey of self-discovery. Lachlan’s wife is a real character and not an artificial obstacle. But I don’t know if I believed in these two characters’ happily ever after by the final chapter.

It’s not that I need my main characters to be perfect. One of my all time favorite romances, Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas, begins a week after the hero has tried to abduct one of the main characters of the previous installment. Sebastian is “debauched, amoral, and perversely proud of it” and openly disdainful of Evie when he first meets her. What I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long, another of my favorites, starts when the hero decides to seduce and abandon the heroine for revenge. (She realizes what he’s up to almost immediately and it’s fantastic.) Sherry Thomas’ characters hurt each other deeply and often actively deceive each other and I think her historical romances are some of the very best out there. Of course, historical romances play by a different set of rules. It’s a world of heightened emotions and consequences removed from our own and one where I’m willing to accept things that I would never buy into in a contemporary romance.

However, I’ve also spent the last few years proclaiming my love for messy contemporary romances like You Again by Kate Goldbeck, Will They or Won’t They by Ava Wilder, and August Lane by Regina Black. Just last month, I bemoaned a contemporary romance where everything felt too neat and tidy for my personal reading preferences. Theoretically, this should have been everything that I wanted. Yet I turned the last page and still wasn’t sold on this couple’s love story, mostly because I believed in Abby’s growth but not necessarily Lachlan’s. One of the reasons that his relationship with his wife is on the rocks is that they want opposite kinds of lives, while Abby slots into his life perfectly. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t develop a deeply emotionally, boundary-crossing friendship with another woman again if Abby starts to want something different for herself later on?

There’s also one crucial difference between Abby Offsides and the three contemporary romances I mentioned earlier: it’s single-POV while all three are dual-POV. We’re firmly in Abby’s head from start to finish, crying and laughing and growing with her. Like I mentioned earlier, seeing her grow into someone who leans into the difficult conversations instead of ducking them is one of the great pleasures of reading this book. But I wanted to see Lachlan’s growth too, to see him reflect and express remorse and untangle his mistakes. I think I might have been a lot more willing to swoon over the romance if I’d gotten to peek inside his head more. I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of single-POV romances over the years and marveled at authors’ ability to write a protagonist in glorious, vivid detail solely through the eyes of the person who loves them. (Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian and Playing for Keeps by Alexandria Bellefleur both do this very well.) However, the messier a particular situation gets, the more I need to be immersed in both sides of it as a reader.

I’m hoping that we get more messy contemporary romances in the years to come. More love stories about people who are still figuring it out, more third act breakups that last longer than a few pages, and more hard-fought happy endings that don’t feel predestined. I think I’d still recommend Abby Offsides, depending on the reader, and I’m hoping for more romance reading experiences like it. More books that make me ponder what I respond to and what’s successful in the genre, that leave me in suspense as to how the author is ever going to get these two people together, and that have me wanting to discuss with other readers immediately.

If you’ve read Abby Offsides, I’d love to hear from you! What kind of messy is too messy for you as a romance reader?

Currently reading: The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders, an expansive family saga narrated by ghosts that’s the FictionMatters buzzy book of the month.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• The campy, glittery Rocky Horror Show on Broadway. Luke Evans was out the night I went (*sobs*) but I was still delighted to see Sherie Rene Scott, Stephanie Hsu, Andrew Durand, and the transformation of Studio 54.

• Fluffy, delicious madeleines from Marbre in Brooklyn. The chocolate one received particularly high reviews in my household.

• The acquisition of a new cookbook, Caroline Chambers’ What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make It Fast, and successfully executing a 15-minute recipe for a delicious Greek chop! I wouldn’t call myself an inspired cook but I can follow a recipe faithfully and there’s a huge section of 15-minute recipes I want to try.

I found myself wondering exactly how many pushes it takes for me to read a book and then, deciding to take three of my recent reads as case studies. Here are four books I read recently and the whole history of my deciding to read them, acquiring them, and then actually reading them.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

I first marked The Priory of the Orange Tree as “want-to-read” in March 2019, about a month after it came out. This was back when I was still using Goodreads and before I started my reading journal so I have no idea why I added it to my TBR, but I suspect it was from general Goodreads hype. Then it sat on my TBR until 2024/2025, when members of the FictionMatters community began chatting about it and my yearning for some really good high fantasy pushed it back towards the forefront of my mind. Sometime last year, it also came highly recommended by a friend whose taste in books I trust. I finally picked up a copy at The Ripped Bodice last year and after vowing to read more long books and craving fantasy, started reading it last Friday. (Seven years after I first marked it as “to read”!) I absolutely loved it.

Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee

I purchased this book from a “Utopia/Dystopia” display at the McNally Jackson store in the Seaport last year, based purely on the cover, blurb, and a vague memory of having loved Tanith Lee’s Claidi Chronicles series as a child. It sat on my shelves, waiting for the right reading mood to strike. Then my fiancé read it, after hearing about it on Reddit and seeing it compared to Ursula K. Le Guin, and enthusiastically encouraged me to read it. (He’s a big sci-fi and speculative fiction reader and we have a shared love of Ursula K. Le Guin.) I ended up reading it in between two very different historical romances and it was the perfect change of pace.

Waist Deep by Linnea Maja Ernst

I bought this one along with Table for One by Emma Gannon while browsing idly on Blackwells, as I sometimes do. I had vague ideas of reading it sometime last summer but it got lost in the shuffle until it was released in the US, where I saw it on a new releases display table at McNally Jackson and wound up chatting with one of the booksellers there about it. Upon hearing it was loosely inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I promptly dug it out and got lost in the Danish woods during a hot day in June.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

The first time I heard about this series was when the first installment was featured in last year’s FictionMatters Paperback Summer Reading Guide. I bought it along with a few other titles from the guide that intrigued me and then it languished a bit in a pile of books meant to bar our cats from getting stuck in the corner behind my armchair. Then I started hearing about the series again this spring, courtesy of more FictionMatters readers and Michelle Martin’s lovely review of the series. So many readers whose taste I know and trust told me that I would love these books and they were completely correct.

Something that struck me when I was going back through my reading history is just how big a role the other readers in my life play. A recommendation from someone whose taste I know and trust is often what gives me the final push to pick something up, especially if I know I’ll want to talk about it with them! And it’s a nice reminder that I don’t have to read a book right away to love it or to discuss it in community. It took me seven years to get to The Priory of the Orange Tree and I think I might have loved it even more now than I would have back in 2019.

Let me know how many times you’ve heard about a book before deciding to read it in the comments! (I asked one friend and she said she heard about Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall about six times, between friends, bookish podcasts, and bookstore displays, before she read it this spring!)

Currently reading: How to Fake It in Society by KJ Charles, about a con man who falls in love with his mark.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• I went to Hudson Valley Shakespeare to see their production of As You Like It this past weekend, which I thought especially shone with its use of music and emphasis on the sisterly love between Rosalind and Celia. Their new theater space is gorgeous and you can picnic before the show if you find yourself in the vicinity of Garrison this summer!

• That trip was accompanied by an excellent wander through Cold Spring, home to very good ice cream, lots of vintage shops, and a bookstore containing the very best bookstore cat, Buster.

• Another weekend highlight was a mini food tour of Brighton Beach with friends, where we feasted upon khachapuri, vareniki, and assorted potato-stuffed pastries and admired the glory of the hot bar at Tashkent Supermarket.

My July reading goals were:

• Three sci-fi romances or sci-fi novels that have significant romantic subplots: Only Bad Options and Only Good Enemies by Jennifer Estep, Fated Blades by Ilona Andrews

• And one Women’s Prize winner: The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville

My August reading goals are:

• About half of the books I read being titles I got from Aardvark Book Club

• A buzzy summer romance

• And a Women’s Prize winner

Favorite of the month:

Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer

A young American man determined to set out upon a serious life takes a job with an imperious elderly Baronessa in her villa in the Tuscan hills and instead finds himself among a colorful cast of characters, caught up in various schemes, and having an affair with a married man. I adored this witty, wise, joyous, and sunshine-soaked novel and frequently discovered that I was laughing out loud on the subway or grinning down at the page while I was reading it. It’s a perfectly balanced piece: charming without sacrificing an ounce of emotional depth, glorying in the eccentricity of its characters and setting without ever becoming twee, exuberant and expansive despite its short span, and somehow both classic and new all at once. Greer explores how we turn tragedies big and small into triumphant comedy through storytelling and has created a book that’s pure joy.

Really liked

Fated Blades by Ilona Andrews

The heads of two powerful rival families must team up to prevent sinister off-planet forces from gaining access to a powerful technology in this action-packed, novella-length sci-fi romance. I’ve talked about my love for Ilona Andrews here before but I think they’re simply the best at crafting smart, competent main characters who form true power couples and Ramona and Matias are no exception. It’s just so satisfying to watch them problem solve and take down their enemies together. This is the third in a series but I dropped right into the story with no issues and spent a very pleasant evening with a thrilling adventure. (Open door, low steam.)

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 4 by Beth Brower

Reading this marvelous historical series feels like watching the latest episode of a top-notch, cozy period piece on PBS. I’ve been allotting myself one each month as a special treat and am already dreading the moment when I run out of installments to curl up with. Brower’s writing is witty, charming, and atmospheric but there’s a real vein of deep emotion running through. I continue to adore Emma, her indefatigable spirit, and the friendships she’s slowly forming with other residents of St. Crispian’s.

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Vorkosigan Saga #9)

Miles Vorkosigan meets his clone brother Mark again when Mark launches a dangerous expedition to rescue the clones of Jackson's Whole and steals some of Miles's fleet to do it. This is one of the darkest installments of the Vorkosigan Saga--check the content warnings on this one if you’re a sensitive reader--but it never feels hopeless and the journey that Bujold takes Mark on is wildly impressive. I wasn’t sold at all on Mark at the beginning of the book and was completely invested in his character growth and fate by the end. This is a brilliant character study and portrait of someone evolving in real-time and an action-packed, twisty sci-fi adventure. Bujold has a keen understanding of both the darkest and the noblest parts of human nature and an even sharper sense of justice.

Thistlemarsh by Moorea Corrigan

After a war that killed her cousin and left her brother shell-shocked, Mouse returns to the grand manor where she grew up and discovers that her uncle has left it to her on the condition that she restore the house to its former glory in one month, a near impossible task. So she strikes a faerie bargain. This historical fantasy reminded me both of the Emily Wilde series and of the Robin McKinley books that I adored in middle school and fell exactly in my fantasy sweet spot. Corrigan perfectly captures the push-pull between the allure and the danger of faeries, as well as the scars left throughout England by World War I. There's a whimsy and an edge, a deep vein of sorrow and an equally deep strain of healing, and a gloriously slow-burn romance. And there's a house that's a character of its own, decaying yet still possessed of a gravitational pull that it exerts on these characters. (Kissing only.)

Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone by Louisa Darling

A reserved duke who secretly bare-knuckle boxes at a seedy club and the cook who accompanied his half-sister to London looking for adventure are drawn to each other almost immediately, despite the vast difference in their stations. This feels like a slightly more modern take on the kinds of classic historical romances that I devoured when I was first getting into the genre and I thought it was enormously fun. I especially enjoyed how Darling develops both the emotional and the physical chemistry between Bess and Nathaniel, who feel perfectly matched from the moment they first start arguing in a carriage. There’s also some lovely deepening of the relationship between Nathaniel and the rest of the Lively family and an extremely intriguing tease for the next book. (Open door, medium steam.)

Once, Again, Always by Amanda Gayle (releases October 6th)

A gorgeously yearning second-chance romance between former academic rivals that had me glued to the page. The amount of pining on display here is fabulous. We're in Molly's head throughout, as she wakes up without her memories and tries to figure out how she wound up married to her one-time rival, but the little moments where we get glimpses of the depth of feeling churning through Aster are perfect insights into their relationship. Watching Molly fall in love with him all over again is downright swoony and although it's a slow, slow burn, it only makes the payoff all the more satisfying. I also loved their group of loyal, loving, occasionally interfering friends and one very good cat. Gayle's prose has a lovely lyricism to it, especially when it comes to describing how Molly slowly, tentatively tiptoes back towards loving her husband.(Open door, low steam.)

The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville

Two outsiders meet in a small Australian bush town, one a curator and artist there to develop a heritage museum and one an engineer sent there to demolish an old bridge that's part of said heritage. This is a depiction of two people who have given up on love finding each other in awkward fits and starts, of an eccentric, incurably nosy, and ultimately welcoming small town, and of the beauty that can be found in the unexpected. I found this funny, moving, and beautifully written, although perhaps not the book for any readers who suffer from severe secondhand embarrassment. (I recorded several quotes from this in my quote notebook and wanted to festoon it with page flags.) Grenville is exquisitely aware of the agony of being human and all the petty comedies and tragedies that make up everyday life.

For the Bride by Becca Grischow

Alice is sober, slowly rebuilding her friendships, and still grieving her musician dad when her best friend, and ex-girlfriend, Ginny asks Alice to be her bridesmaid and she's thrust into close proximity with the wildly irritating, wildly attractive Renee Roberts. This smart, complicated enemies-to-lovers romance won me over completely. I loved how slowly Alice and Renee open up to and fall for each other and then how absolutely smitten Alice is with her. The secondary storylines about Alice grappling with her grief, her sobriety, and the complexities of friendship are equally lovely and layered. I particularly liked the way that Grischow uses imagery to capture Alice's emotional state and how precisely she writes about feelings. (Open door, low steam.)

Small Island by Andrea Levy

Gilbert and Hortense Joseph, a Jamaican couple, arrive in London after World War II in hopes of a new life and instead find a country still scarred from war and hostility everywhere they turn. Their landlady Queenie Bligh, who started taking in lodgers when her husband vanished after the war, is hiding secrets and struggles of her own. This novel is a long, slow, often challenging build that’s worth every page. Levy crafts both a sprawling look at a crumbling empire and a deeply personal study of these two couples. All four main characters are carefully, fully drawn, both their best and their worst traits on display, and Levy switches between POVs and time periods expertly. I thought the way she brings all the plot threads together in the last 75 or so pages was particularly fantastic, surprising and fitting. Another gem from the Women’s Prize.

Land by Maggie O’Farrell

On a peninsula in a remote corner of Ireland still bearing the scars of the Great Hunger, a map maker and his family all have different relationships to the land they live on, as life tears them apart and brings them back together. This historical novel demands the reader's full attention and long, uninterrupted stretches of time to read it in. I could probably pick at some of the craft elements here, like the uneven pacing, and struggled to fall into the rhythms of the story at first but found myself enraptured by it more and more as it went on. The nature writing is beautiful, the history heartbreaking, and the family keenly drawn in her luminous prose. It's a rich depiction of the way that family dynamics shift, how grief is passed down from parents to children, and how we lose and keep our faith, themes that she's circled over and over again in her work. It's a rich, layered text endlessly ripe for discussion and it's a story both epic and intimate.

Mina’s Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa

A woman looks back on the year she spent as a young girl with her aunt, uncle, and frail cousin Mina in their grand house and the world of secrets and storytelling she inhabited with Mina in this charming and wistful novel. Ogawa writes about memory so beautifully. Tomoko’s recounting of that eventful year feels like a shimmering soap bubble that could pop at any moment and there’s a slightly heightened unreality about everything that happens in the sprawling house. This perfectly depicts the moment of being poised between childhood and teenagerdom and the intensity of childhood bonds. If you liked Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor, pick this one up next.

Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai (Daughters of Crime #2)

A con woman trying to outrun her family drama and a man searching for his missing brother reluctantly join forces on a cross-country road trip, where they find themselves outrunning danger and falling for each other. Note that I would strongly recommend reading Partners in Crime first, since these two are closely linked. (And equally excellent!) I’ve really been enjoying Rai’s turn into adventure rom-coms. There’s a cinematic feel to her plotting and writing, a few outrageous twists and turns that feel exactly the right amount of dramatic, and incendiary chemistry between her main couples. I loved Krish and Sejal together, from the initial wild spark between them to how Rai parallels their experiences as eldest children to their small gestures of comfort for each other. (Open door, medium steam.)

Yes, Chef by Grace Reilly

A fun, sexy, summery read about an influencer longing to prove herself to her family and an all-business chef who team up to relaunch and reimagine his father figure's restaurant. This was an excellent example of the joys of dual POV. Both Jack and Poppy's emotional arcs are well-developed and satisfying and Reilly crafts two distinctive POVs that perfectly show how they complement each other. (I also liked how thoughtfully she writes about each of their experiences with ADHD!) I adored sunny, bubbly Poppy and her changing relationship with her family, as they grow to appreciate how good she is at what she does. The food descriptions and peek inside life in a restaurant kitchen are a delightful added bonus. Especially recommended for anyone who enjoyed It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey. (Open door, high steam.)

Good People by Patmeena Sabit

A remarkably propulsive literary mystery about an Afghan immigrant family who seems to have achieved the American Dream and then is plunged into tragedy and controversy when their beautiful and rebellious teenage daughter dies. Sabit tells the story through a chorus of people involved, including the family's friends, family, and neighbors, Zorah's friends and teachers, and key figures in the case that ensues, and as a result, we're left to draw our own conclusions about what happened. I flew through this in a day and was especially impressed by the polyphonic narration and how Sabit is constantly playing with what the reader believes to be true.

Liked with minor quibbles

Only Bad Options and Only Good Enemies by Jennifer Estep (Galactic Bonds #1 and #2)

A lab rat on the run from the company whose secrets she exposed and an infamous warrior meet on a battlefield and find themselves tied together by an unwanted magical telepathic connection in this blend of sci-fi adventure, fantasy, and historical romance-style ballroom intrigue. Estep throws a little bit of everything together here and it makes for a delicious space opera that I zipped through. Kyrion and Vesper are the perfect pairing of brooding hero and heroine who’s coming into her true badass nature and the story gives them time to learn to trust each other and open up emotionally before they so much as kiss. I did sometimes want a little more world-building and a stronger sense of exactly what's technology and what's magic in this world and Estep does have the tendency to overuse certain phrases but I’d recommend this if you’re looking for an action-packed sci-fi romance. (Open door, but not until book two!)

By the Bootstraps by Alexa Martin

After her mom's death, Luna Starr buys a house in a small Texas town sight unseen and moves there to live out her cowboy romance dreams, then finds herself falling for brooding local handyman and high school football coach Tate. Luna's narrative voice is so strong, funny, fresh, and sparkling with personality. I also really enjoyed how Martin writes about small town dynamics and the cast of charming supporting characters she creates, including a few characters who I'm hoping get a book of their own. Where I found my enjoyment slowing was around the third act breakup, where Luna's actions and feelings don't line up with the person we've seen her be for most of the book and which might have benefited from getting a little more insight into Tate's emotional state. (Open door, medium steam.)

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa L. Sevigny

The true story of two dedicated female botanists who floated the entire length of the Colorado River and braved the waters of the Grand Canyon to catalog never-before-seen species. This is a fascinating and proudly feminist work of nonfiction, as Sevigny recounts both the physical dangers and the sexism that the two women faced. The nature writing is especially beautiful and I was particularly drawn in by the descriptions of how the Colorado River landscape has been shaped by both natural and human forces, including the negative impact of the dams built along the river. I did occasionally struggle to keep all the secondary characters straight--the men on the raft trip all blur together--but would recommend to fans of nature-focused nonfiction.

Sweet but not quite what I wanted

The Summer Girlfriend by Kristina Forest

A stand-in bridesmaid who's been the victim of a string of bad luck and a business heir grappling with his family's legacy make a deal for the summer: he'll pay her to pretend to be his girlfriend for a series of summer weekends at his family's beach house and she'll use the money to finally go back to college. This is a perfectly nice, summery beach read where everyone's perfectly nice and being good to each other and working out their problems in sensible, thoughtful ways and I found myself yearning for someone to make a big mistake. Or for a little more tension or bigger feelings or just for the stakes to feel slightly higher. If you want a sweet beach read with Hallmark movie vibes, I think you might enjoy this a lot but it just wasn't what I've been craving in my contemporary romance lately. (Open door, low steam.)

Solar Eclipse of the Heart by Kate Robb (releases October 6th)

A cozy roommate romance with a dash of magical realism and the story of a woman learning to forge new connections and open herself up to chance after losing her beloved uncle. I enjoyed Annalise and Mackenzie's slow slide from friends to lovers, complete with star-gazing on their building's roof and cheesy Christmas movie nights, and was particularly fond of Annalise's burgeoning friendship with Koko, the owner of the vintage store downstairs. However, Mackenzie is almost too perfect of a love interest, there for whatever Annalise needs, and it seemed like all his character growth happened off the page. I also felt like the third act breakup was a bit rushed and didn’t give some big emotional beats the room to breathe that I crave. (Open door, medium steam.)

Let me know your favorite July reads in the comments!

Currently reading: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, a chunky fantasy with royal intrigue, danger, and dragons.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• Properly meal prepping work lunches for the first time in forever! I made this pesto, sun-dried tomato, and chicken bean salad and although I am not a gifted cook by any stretch of the imagination, it came out pretty well.

• Fan Fan Doughnuts in Bed-Stuy, which has been on my list to try forever. I finally made it there with a friend on an afternoon walk and the mango passion fruit donut was heavenly.

• Having an impromptu two-person book club with a friend about Maggie O’Farrell’s Land. (Not to mention the wonderful Fiction Matters discussion we had about it a few weeks go!) I’ve been trying to be better about my various book clubs this past month and it’s a reminder of how nice it is to read in community.

Each of these books had me delighted, comforted, and deeply satisfied by the time I turned the last page. They’re feel-good but I wouldn’t necessarily describe them as fluffy. There’s real emotion within the pages of these titles, accompanied by a deep vein of kindness and a generosity towards their characters. There are also a handful of romantic subplots but I wouldn’t classify them as genre romances. I must admit that this is a very British list and would love to hear any recommendations for tender, sparkling international novels! But each of these are titles that I would happily reread, press into the hands of a friend, or simply savor flipping through on a rainy day.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

I just finished volume 4 of this series last week and each installment feels like catching up on the latest episode of a favorite cozy PBS costume drama. We have a quirky London neighborhood with a resident ghost, a colorful cast of characters and potential love interests, and our valiant heroine Emma, who takes everything from imperious aunts to interfering dukes in her stride.

Anything by Laurie Colwin

Laurie Colwin was my favorite authorial discovery of last year. I started with Happy All the Time, a delicious comedy of manners set in a now-vanished New York, and went on to her marvelous short stories with The Lone Pilgrim, food writing with Home Cooking, and clever, nuanced mid-life crisis novel Family Happiness.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

An orphaned socialite has no other recourse than to descend upon her set of rural relatives in deepest, darkest Sussex and promptly brings her organizational acumen to bear on the entire family. I read this deeply clever, endlessly funny parody of rural melodramas back in 2019 and still recommend it to people on a regular basis. I even have a few other Gibbons novels lurking around my shelves that I should pick up.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

A housekeeper, her young son, and a mathematics professor whose short-term memory only lasts eighty minutes form their own sort of family in this beautiful look at memory and mathematics. I was deeply moved by this story of unexpected connection and have never found math to be so fascinating.

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

A sprawling, totally engrossing family saga that chronicles three generations worth of triumphs and heartbreaks that had me wanting to go to Cornwall and bake bread in a tiny stone cottage immediately. There's a richness and warmth to Pilcher's writing that radiates off the page and envelops you in the story and I love the precision of her descriptions, especially when it comes to domestic details.

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley

A group of strangers with almost nothing in common besides their commute are unexpectedly drawn together one afternoon. I found the entire cast of characters delightful, including French bulldog Lulu, and loved how Pooley blends a cozy feeling with some real emotional heft and plenty of witty lines, particularly from the titular Iona, an advice columnist with a magnificent wardrobe and plenty of opinions.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

A mild-mannered spinster becomes enmeshed in the lives of her next-door neighbors. Pym is one of my very favorite literary observers of human behavior, with a perfect grasp of her characters’ surface foibles and deeper yearnings, and this splendid comedy of manners might be my very favorite of hers. If you like her style, try A Glass of Blessings next.

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly

A voice-y delight about two siblings navigating heartbreak, identity, and their sprawling, chaotic Maori-Russian-Catalonian family. Messy as these characters may be, they’re also deeply lovable and I adored spending time with this family, as well as getting a peek into life in contemporary New Zealand. Best of all, another novel about this family is coming to us in April 2027.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice

A coming-of-age story set in the 1950’s, with shades of Nancy Mitford and I Capture the Castle, where our intrepid heroine Penelope encounters a bold new friend, a cynical yet strangely appealing love interest, parties and mishaps and the sometimes painful, sometimes glorious process of growing up. Bonus points for the magnificently crumbling stately home Penelope and her family live in.

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sheriff

A quiet, kind story of an English family’s annual holiday to the seaside that celebrates small pleasures and ordinary people in the loveliest way. It’s sincere without being overly sentimental or syrupy and I came to care about every single member of the Stevens family like they were my closest friends. A gem of an interwar novel.

The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John

Four women working in the dress department of a store in 1950’s Sydney form a surprising bond during one very eventful summer in this tribute to female friendship and the immense power of the right dress. It’s a wonderfully observed book and a perfect capsule of a time and place that’s about to radically change.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Armin

Four very different women respond to a newspaper advertisement offering a medieval castle in Italy for rent and experience a transformative month on the Italian Riviera in this wonderfully evocative story about the magic of travel. I read this book on a rainy spring day and was instantly swept away to the sun-soaked Italian coast with von Armin’s luscious, charming prose.

Currently reading: The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville, a comedy of manners and love story set in rural Australia that’s my Women’s Prize winner for the month.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• Like cinephiles everywhere, I went to see The Odyssey last weekend and had a fantastic time. An epic that truly feels epic.

• Very good Vietnamese food at Bricolage in Brooklyn, including two different kinds of summer rolls.

• And The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at New World Stages, which had me cackling in my seat.

1. The Romance Revival by Christina Lauren (July 14th): Lauren’s books were my introduction to contemporary romance and after no new CLo last year (sniff), they are back with a marriage in trouble/amnesia romance that I preordered the moment I could. For me, their books are peak summer and I’m ready to race through this one on a lazy summer weekend.

2. Extracurricular by Rachel Lynn Solomon (July 14th): Solomon is another of my favorite authors and one of the few I trust to pull off a professor student romance and an age gap, tropes that I don’t usually reach for. I can't wait to see what kind of a fresh spin she puts on it.

3. Just a Highland Fling by Naina Kumar (July 21st): A road trip through the Scottish Highlands and a bagpiper hero?! I really like Kumar’s writing and after hearing her talk a little about this book at a Dell event last year, I’ve been increasingly excited about it.

4. Fossil Feud by Maggie North (July 28th): I am vehemently in favor of more unusual jobs in romance and this is a paleontologist romance! The hero and heroine have to work together to stop a fake dinosaur discovery and this sounds like the perfect summer adventure.

5. Wild Goose Chase by Sarah Adler (July 28th): A grumpy antique store owner and his new colleague have to track down an illicit taxidermy goose. Just reading the premise of Adler’s latest makes me grin and I continue to shout about her funny, smart, surprisingly moving books from the rooftops.

6. See You at the Sunset by Susan Lee (August 11th): An enemies to lovers romance between a free spirit and a buttoned up lawyer temporarily staying with their respective grandparents at a Palm Springs retirement community for the summer. This promises to be a wonderfully summery contemporary romance from an author whose adult debut I really enjoyed.

7. In What World by Bridget Morrissey (August 11th): Two high school rivals investigating the disappearance of their high school teacher find themselves traveling through alternate realities in this sapphic speculative romance. I used to be obsessed with parallel universes as a child and I'm very curious to see where Morrissey takes this.

8. See You Next Tuesday by Kate Stayman-London (September 8th): A romance that follows two political staffers through a decade’s worth of campaigns. Early reviews suggest that this features rich character development and a When Harry Met Sally-esque will-they-won’t-they. I’m not 100% sure I’m ready for a politics-set romance but I’d like to give this one a try.

9. Doomsdate by Laura Piper Lee (September 15th): She’s a doomsday prepper. He’s a nerdy film professor. (With a cat!) Their first date goes terribly wrong when the zombie apocalypse starts and I think this sounds like the perfect early fall read. (I also really want to prioritize Piper Lee’s spring release, Potshot, which I’ve heard many good things about.)

10. A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister (September 15th): The follow up to one of my absolute favorites of last year! This centers on Jonah's sister Fiona, a single mom, and the younger owner of her favorite wine bar who's been capital-P Pining for her.

11. From Beijing, With Love by Bei Lin (September 29th): An opposites attract gay romance that starts with a whirlwind visit to Beijing and a tour of the Great Wall. I’ve been looking for more contemporary romance set outside of the US and this one sounds great.

12. The Thief and the Traitor Bride by V.L. Bovalino (September 29th): I'm not a huge romantasy reader but I deeply enjoyed Bovalino’s The Second Death of Locke and this standalone set in the same world features an estranged couple who have to pose as happily married to pull off a dangerous mission. The most delicious premise.

And four non-romance releases that I’m extra excited for:

• A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett, the third in his Ana and Din fantasy mystery series.

• Meet Me in the Garden by Nina LaCour, a decades-spanning family saga from an author whose evocative prose is one of my favorites.

• Exit Party by Emily St John Mandel, which I’ve been anticipating since it was first announced last year! I love her speculative literary fiction.

• Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske, a murder mystery set at a magical academy.

Let me know in the comments what titles you’re most excited about in the next few months!

I talked a little bit about this in at the beginning of the month but I'm aiming to read three sci-fi romances or sci-fi novels with strong romantic subplots in July. I love a sci-fi romance and continue to be baffled by the fact that the romantasy boom hasn't pulled sci-fi romance along in its wake, just a little. Give me more ramshackle spaceships, space empires, and mysterious alien planets!

In August, I plan to seriously tackle my stack of Aardvark titles before they start teetering and collapse onto the floor. I want about half of the books I read in August to be Aardvark picks, especially since the titles I have from them include everything from romance to fantasy to literary fiction to thriller. A book for every reading mood, in short.

And in September, I want to continue reading my shelves by diving into the many Persephone and Virago titles I own. Lesser known mid-century British female authors feel like the perfect early fall reading mood for me and I’ve built up an impressive collection from my last few trips to London. (As I write this, I can see my shelf full of the distinctive Virago green spines!) This fall is going to be stuffed with big literary releases and I’d love to balance that out with some backlist titles.

Finally, I must make a bookish confession: I am terrible at reading on a Kindle. I got one to read both older romance novels that are only available digitally from the library and ARCs of upcoming titles, with the hope of doing more author interviews, and those are both worthy aims for my reading life that I’d very much like to achieve. And yet I never find myself reaching for my Kindle. If there’s the possibility of reading a paper book, I opt for the physical book every time. I mostly end up reading books on my Kindle either when I need to travel light and can’t bring a book with me or when I’m invested enough in a title (usually around the 40% mark) that I begrudgingly continue reading digitally.

I’d love to hear tips from anyone who reads a lot on a Kindle or other ereader! Is the answer that I should be investing in a different kind of ereader? Experimenting with the settings? Only reading certain types of books on it? I’m open to any and all advice.

Currently reading: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 4 by Beth Brower, as our story plunges into the fall and Emma confronts dance halls, house parties, and (as always) Cousin Archibald.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• The Invite, the new movie from Olivia Wilde. We went to see it last weekend and it was excellent: perfectly paced, extremely well shot and well acted, and a great movie to watch in a full theater.

• Finding a new spot to write in NYC that also happens to have very good breakfast sandwiches.

• An absolutely ideal Prospect Heights afternoon with a friend that featured foccacia sandwiches from Radio Bakery, flaky double chocolate croissants, and book browsing at Love and Legends, which manages to up their charm quotient every single time I go.

I reached out to Anna Cowan to see if she’d be willing to answer some questions and she graciously agreed. I loved getting to hear about her inspiration, her writing process, and what’s next for her.

Natalie: Can you talk about your initial inspiration for The Duke and how the idea evolved as you wrote?

Anna Cowan: I was being plagued by a female character who thought she was the heir to a duke. I told her she couldn’t be. She insisted that she was. Once I accepted her point of view it became clear she wasn’t simply the heir to a duke – she was the duke. No one that autocratic was going to stand in someone else’s shadow.

This led me to think about what makes a romance hero compelling. It’s not his physical hotness, because all characters in a romance are physical hot. It’s the idea of him. A conceptual hotness. This comes from him being, among other things: politically powerful, sexually aggressive, physically imposing and in possession of a tragic backstory.

None of these qualities are inherently male, except for the way we equate power with masculinity. I wanted to see if I could embody them in a woman.

N: Was there a particularly interesting historical tidbit you uncovered or research rabbit hole you went down while writing it?

AC: Researching prostitutes in Revolutionary Paris was pretty eye-opening. My base knowledge of the French Revolution comes from high school history and whatever I’ve absorbed from the culture, so I was starting from the assumption that it was an egalitarian movement. But it turns out women were well and truly left out. They couldn’t be political, or martial; they couldn’t write pamphlets, or plays; they couldn’t receive welfare and they couldn’t beg. Like, what is a woman to do?!

I came across an anecdote I loved, which made it into The Duke. The new police commissioner was conducting his first raid on the brothels of Paris. A prostitute named Marguerite Prieur answered the door and he asked her, “What do you do?” She replied, “Everyone.” (Tout le monde.) Incredible.

N: I loved this way this novel depicts the different ways Kate and Celine wield power and the spiky chemistry between them. Which character came to you first and what was your favorite thing about writing each of them?

AC: Kate came first, with Celine pretty close on her heels. Once I knew I was writing a classic haughty duke, a prostitute suggested herself as the furthest point from that. There’s a class taboo inherent in their relationship, and because Celine has come from Revolutionary France there’s a political taboo as well. That’s a lot of conflict on page right from the get-go!

In every draft Celine was a joy to write. I was moved by her desire to live, against all the odds. Where Kate locks herself away, fearing she’s a monster, Celine wants to live to the fullest at every moment, to “suck down every last sweet drop, and then grind the dry remainder between her teeth and swallow that down as well”.

The best part about writing Kate was…her thighs. Seriously, writing a woman that hot just kind of melted my brain. There’s an interaction in the horror-romance Feast While You Can by Onjuli Datta and Mikaella Clements where a man is congratulating his lesbian cousin on not feeling she has to “look like a man”, like the town dyke does. The lesbian snorts and says, “I’d love to see the man who managed to look like she does.” Yes.

N: One of my favorite parts of The Duke was your lush, vivid prose. What’s a scene or a passage that you’re particularly proud of or that was a joy to write?

AC: It’s a bit on the nose, but there’s a line that delights me so much. Celine is looking across the room at Kate at a social event and she’s having this horny fantasy of making Kate kiss her shoe in front of everyone. She’s brought back to reality by the woman she’s in conversation with – a countess with whom she’s playing the innocent debutante. The countess asks if she’s alright and she responds, “Forgive me, I had a queer turn.” Very queer indeed, lol.

Can I also pause here and say: Hannah Bristow did a phenomenal job reading the book. The audiobook bangs. The scene where Celine finally tells Kate everything that happened to her in Paris after Kate left her there made me cry, even though I literally wrote those words!

N: What romance novel first led you to fall in love with the genre and what titles do you think The Duke is in conversation with?

AC: In my final year at Melbourne Uni I read so many romances – almost exclusively historicals. My husband had just opened a café, an incredibly stressful undertaking, and I basically spent a year being his housekeeper/roommate. I made up the difference with romance novels. (I’m being facetious, but it’s not not true.)

The student union library, the Rowden White, had the most amazing collection of romance paperbacks, and I would just borrow like ten at a time and keep them in a stack by my bed. I would finish one, sigh the sigh of the emotionally replete, and then immediately pick up the next one.

The names that remain with me from that time are Gaelen Foley, Julie Anne Long, Eloisa James, Julia Quinn and Loretta Chase. Later, I obsessively read all of Sherry Thomas and Meredith Duran. Later still I came to Judith Ivory, who I think exists on a god-tier all by herself.

More than any modern queer romance, The Duke is in conversation with these older historicals.

N: What’s a romance (or two) you’ve read and loved lately?

AC: In Memoriam by Alice Winn floored me. I’m normally repelled by anything world-war-ish – it’s at once too big and too overdone. But she made me care about it, deeply. The pragmatic way she depicts the front worked so well, and these two longing boys are coming towards each other through that brutal landscape.

I also loved Good Boy by Carey Sass. It’s a gen-z coming-of-age romance in which Judd’s interactions with his phone are an inextricable part of his internal landscape. Videos of the war in Gaza sit alongside a bus ride, his anxious response to difficult emotions is to monitor the high-fashion sweater he has his eye on, and a notification from his mum is a clanging intrusion into his porn consumption. It’s hilarious, lonely and incredibly well-written.

N: No worries if you’re not able to speak about this yet, but is there a possibility we might get more books in this universe? (I’m fervently hoping for a Royce story!)

AC: Royce is coming next, of course! Her book is already under contract and will most likely be out early 2028 (I’m sorry, I’m such a slow writer, boo). She’s been a pain in the arse to write, but also the most fun I’ve ever had on page. She’s an absolute romp. She’s a mess. She’s…a lot in bed. The story is rake/spinster and boy oh boy is that spinster uptight. Let’s just say she literally shrieks the first time Royce kisses her somewhere she probably shouldn’t.

Ed. note: The joy I felt, knowing that we’re getting a Royce story! She’s Kate’s cousin, a dissolute rake with a heart of gold buried deep down, and I love a lady rake.

Thank you so much to Anna for answering my questions! You can find The Duke on Bookshop.org and on bookstore shelves now.

Currently reading: By the Bootstraps by Alexa Martin, a sparkly small-town romance with a bit of cowboy flair.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• The heat finally broke last weekend and we went for an excellent walk along the Brooklyn waterfront, including gazing at some impressively tall ships.

• Getting to properly make the acquaintance of our friends’ new-ish cat, who very patiently sat by my shoulder and allowed me to pet him.

• Discovering Split Eights, a super cute cocktail bar tucked into a side street in the Financial District.

My June reading goals were:

• Three queer romances in three different genres: The Devil She Knows by Alexandria Bellefleur, The Duke by Anna Cowan, and Get Over It, April Evans by Ashley Herring Blake

• Three historical romances set outside 19th century England: Wild Sweet Love by Beverly Jenkins, And Then There Was the One by Martha Waters, and Let Us Dream by Alyssa Cole

• The next book in a series: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 3 by Beth Brower

• And a Women’s Prize winner: I started Small Island by Andrea Levy in June but I’m still reading it. It’s the kind of book that demands to be read slowly and thoroughly and I’ll have a review for you next month!

My July reading goals are:

• Three sci-fi romances or sci-fi novels that have significant romantic subplots

• And one Women’s Prize winner

Favorites of the month

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (Maggie the Undying #1)

Maggie goes to sleep in Austin, Texas and wakes up in the world of her favorite fantasy series armed with only her wits and the inability to die. And, naturally for an Ilona Andrews heroine, she decides to rewrite the grim story of Kair Toren and stand up to the powerful people who want to wreck it. I had a fantastic time reading this from start to finish. Andrews (a husband and wife writing team!) has a true gift for pacing, plot twists, and writing cinematic action scenes. This is a stay up late just to read one more chapter kind of book and it's addictive. All of our characters are satisfyingly competent, especially our savvy heroine, and somehow Andrews has magically made a brooding, morally grey, and uber-powerful love interest appealing to me…between this and their Hidden Legacy series, they might be the only authors capable of selling me on this kind of fictional man. Plus there's magical animals! Mage battles! Court politics! It's both deeply satisfying on its own and had me clamoring for the second installment immediately.

The Duke by Anna Cowan

Years after a night of passion that then saw her abandoned to the dangers of Revolutionary Paris, courtesan Celine Genet arrives in London with a dangerous letter and a bargain for Kate, the Duke of Howard: Kate will help Celine find a wealthy, titled husband and Celine will keep Kate's secret. This is dark, dramatic, lush and over-the-top in all the ways that I love. The stakes are high from the very beginning, when Kate and Celine meet in the house of a man who's bound for the guillotine, and the emotional intensity never lets up. I loved Kate's force, Celine's cunning, and the fierce way they put themselves in danger for each other. The prose has a classic feel to it and there's some amazingly vivid imagery both when it comes to the characters' emotional relationships or the decadence of the ton. I’m still thinking about some of the scenes that Cowan sketches here and I really, really want more books in this world of powerful female nobles. (Open door, medium steam.)

The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn

A woman in Paris for the wedding of her former sister-in-law joins forces with the gruff best man in an attempt to save the wedding after an offhand remark sends the bride spiraling. But, like any Kate Clayborn book, this is so much more than that. It's an examination of the idea of an amicable divorce, of the truths we owe to the people we love, the work of healing, and the beauty of one transformative week. The descriptions of Paris are exquisite, the sentences lush and lovely and complex, and the way Clayborn reveals her characters to the reader beautiful. There's moments here that are just heartstopping with the intensity of her prose and the feeling it conveys. It's a messy book, one that knows the people you love most can hurt you and that sometimes they're worth loving anyway and that complication is inherent is any deep relationship. I love the way that she lets her characters live in ambiguity and complexity and how she shows both Layla and Griff working through their pain. This book is romantic in all the truest ways and I believed in both the sudden depth and intensity of Griff and Layla's connection and the lasting nature of their love. One of my favorites of the year. (Open door, low steam.)

Really liked

The Devil She Knows by Alexandria Bellefleur

After being dumped by her girlfriend, chef Samantha Cooper is stuck in an elevator with a gorgeous woman who claims to be a demon and offers Sam a deal: six wishes in exchange for Sam's soul. This is interesting structurally, especially as Sam spends a big chunk of the novel trying to get her ex-girlfriend back, but I think Bellefleur pulls it off. The connection between Sam and Daphne is seeded really well, from the first flash of attraction to a deeper connection, and Bellefleur captures every moment of their growing relationship, while also making Sam's heartbreak ring true. Daphne is such a fun love interest to read, in all her scheming, demonic glory. A delightful foray into a new genre for a favorite author of mine. (Open door.)

Get Over It, April Evans by Ashley Herring Blake

After reluctantly closing her shop, tattoo artist April Evans takes a summer job teaching at a lakeside resort and finds herself sharing a cabin with the younger woman her ex left her for. Blake is an expert at the messy sapphic romance and I especially liked the emotional complexity on show here, as she writes about two women both in the middle of their own journeys of self-discovery and artistic reinvention. The way that she writes about April and Daphne's approaches to making art and channeling their creativity is lovely, as she plunges the reader into the thick of the creative process. There's also a thoughtfully written subplot about wrestling with changing friendships and both the lakeside setting and the romance are dreamy. (Open door, high steam.)

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion; Vol. 3 by Beth Brower

In the third installment of her journals, Emma M. Lion hunts for tickets to a St. Crispian's production, is enlisted by her aunt to be her cousin's foil, and grapples with her lingering grief over the death of her first love. For me, the magic of this series is that charming and fizzy and funny as it is, there's a real undercurrent of poignancy and sadness. Brower writes about grief in a really lovely, subtle way and my heart ached for Emma and the brave face she puts on. I also relished our introduction to the further quirks of Emma's wonderfully eccentric neighborhood and the wide assortment of potential love interests. (I have no idea who her endgame is and I like it that way!)

Cape Fever by Nadia Davids

Young maid Soraya is hired to work at a crumbling Cape Town mansion by its eccentric owner in this summery Gothic that simmers with tensions, resentment, and the ghosts of the past. Any good Gothic novel has a haunted house and this one has a painting that seems strangely alive, a vengeful spirit, a perfectly preserved childhood bedroom, and an imperious, cunning mistress. I was fascinated by the depiction of a 1920's Cape Town scarred by World War I and of the Cape Malay community's history and culture. I'd especially recommend this if you're headed to Cape Town anytime soon or if you're interested in learning more about South African history.

Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst

This story of five university friends reuniting for a weekend in the Danish woods where they flirt, argue, and wonder how they arrived at their present from their rebellious pasts was exactly my kind of messy. It's especially good at capturing millenial self-consciousness, the urge to arrange one's life like it's a cinematic tableau, and the friction between ideals and reality. The forest setting is gorgeous and there's some particularly decadent passages of description that conjure up the heat and languor perfectly. (Not to mention the carefully selected domestic details! I love a well placed description of a character's clothing or their dishes.) Ernst also writes from an array of distinctive POVs, whirling in and out of each character's head. I think this might be a great pairing with Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna.

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson

A quirky memoir of life with small children in rural Vermont that had me marveling at Jackson's range. (The Haunting of Hill House remains one of the most eerie and terrifying books I've ever read.) I laughed out loud multiple times, whether Jackson is describing her daughter's small army of imaginary friends or dealing with her husband's attempts to hunt a groundhog with an air rifle, and especially liked how distinctive and delightfully weird all three of her children's personalities are. And I loved the cats.

Something About You by Julie James

When someone is murdered in the hotel room next to hers, U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde is caught up in a high-profile case and put under FBI protection, run by the very same cocky FBI agent who still (wrongly) blames her for a botched case years ago. This snappy romantic suspense positively crackles with chemistry, from Cameron and Jack’s banter to their moments of peril to their grudging and then full-throated admiration of each other. Both main characters are supremely competent from start to finish and I especially loved how Cameron gets to be both tough as nails and really feminine. This is crying out to become a big-screen rom-com, perhaps starring rom-com queen of my heart Zoey Deutch. (Open door, medium steam.)

Platform Decay by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #8)

Murderbot is back, this time on a rescue mission that will require it to interact with (horror of horrors) children. I love Murderbot’s dry, sardonic voice, its perpetual crankiness, and the deep well of principle and reluctant affection that hides beneath said crankiness. One of the great pleasures of the series is seeing Murderbot figure out how to interact with humans, and how those humans learn to work with Murderbot too. There’s a found family element that’s deeply affecting but never cheesy. I also find Wells’ vision of the future fascinating--it’s dark in a way that feels very plausible but it’s also determinedly hopeful.

Liked with minor quibbles

Big Stick Energy by Sarina Bowen

A hockey team captain and a bubbly admin agree to fake date their way through a family wedding they’re both dreading. There’s lots of little moments between Eric and Darcy that had me grinning with delight and their chemistry is palpable. Darcy in particular is a heroine who so easy to root for--she’s smart, bubbly, funny, and capable. Eric has a similarly strong moral compass and they just feel like a really well matched couple. I also enjoyed Bowen’s quippy, breezy writing style, which made for a fast and fun read. What I wanted was more of their complicated relationships with both of their families, which mostly seem to get resolved off-the-page, and less of Darcy’s villainous half-sister, who seems almost cartoonish in her hatred of Darcy. (Open door, medium steam on the higher end.)

The Examiner by Janice Hallett

The six students on a multimedia art course clashed from the start, from assignments set on fire to their final project for a local company. But did that clash end in a murder? This clever, twisty epistolary mystery is told in text chains, emails, diary entries, and student reports. I just enjoy being along for the ride with Hallett's books and seeing what twist she'll pull out next, as well as how she crafts characters through their way of speaking and writing. This one is particularly focused on the dark side of group dynamics and the power of guilt and although I didn't find the final twists quite as satisfying or surprising as The Appeal or The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, it was a solid pick when I wanted a fast and plotty read.

Wild Sweet Love by Beverly Jenkins

Famed female outlaw Teresa July's bank robbing days are over and she's slated to spend the next year under the guardianship of a respected member of Philadelphia society, whose handsome son Teresa soon finds herself falling for. Teresa is a fabulous heroine: utterly and completely herself, confident, and sharp-tongued. I particularly liked her growing bond with Molly, her future mother-in-law, the historical context, and how Jenkins writes communities of strong women who possess all kinds of strength. However, the open-door scenes are written in a very flowery style that harkens back to older historical romances and that I didn’t love and the pacing felt a tad rushed. Recommended if you're looking for a unique, fierce heroine and a peek into Philadelphia history. (Open door, medium steam.)

And Then There Was the One by Martha Waters

After a string of murders has tourists flocking to her small Cotswolds village and a suspicious death is ruled an accident, intrepid sleuth Georgie Radcliffe writes to a renowned detective for assistance and gets his handsome secretary (and incorrigible flirt) Sebastian instead. This book takes place over a very compressed timeline and although I enjoyed Georgie and Sebastian's chemistry enormously--I love a practical woman and mildly roguish man--I don't know if we got quite enough moments of deeper connection for me to buy that they were ready to reshape their lives for each other. However, I still found this to be an absolute treat of a read. We have an absurdly quaint village, a very good elderly beagle, and a lot of quips and charm. It's a loving send-up of the 1930's mystery, with just the right amount of winking self awareness. (Open door, low steam.)

Objectively good but not my preferred genre

Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe

On a visit to the quaint town of Little Pepperidge, an overworked princess finds herself cursed to stay inside a run-down bookstore until she discovers her heart's desire. Reading this unlocked something key about my reading preferences: however well done they are--and I think this one is quite well done!--cozy fantasy is simply not my preferred genre. Coombe's style is whimsical in a way that reminded me of a grown-up version of some of my childhood favorites, her descriptions of the bookstore are delightful, and her playful sense of humor adds a welcome dash of fun. Many of the scenes where various princes show up to kiss Tandy and attempt to break her curse had me giggling. But the stakes are so low that there's absolutely zero tension and barely a climactic moment. I don't need the entire world to be at risk but I want something to be. If you like cozy romantic fantasy, I think you'll love this but I needed a little more danger and excitement. (Closed door.)

In which I struggle with romance novellas

Let Us Dream by Alyssa Cole

In 1917 Harlem, sparks fly between a nightclub owner involved in the suffragette movement and an Indian chef. I loved all the historical detail that Cole weaves in and how she explores the themes of community and solidarity. The world on the page is richly developed, nuanced, and humming with life. However, I so wish this was longer! The romance takes a bit of a back burner to the fight for the vote and the perils both characters face. I wanted more of Bertha and Amir learning how to build a long lasting relationship, especially since they’re both incredibly strong willed characters who clash frequently, and of the giddy moments when they’re falling for each other. For me, romance novellas often work best when they keep a tight focus on the central couple.

I had some structural quibbles

Level Up for Love by Lenora Woods

Two former college rivals are forced together during a D&D campaign. My favorite aspect of this romance was its gleeful embrace of all things nerdy, especially when it comes to exploring its central couple's love for game design. It's clear that Woods knows and loves the world of D&D and I really enjoyed getting to learn more about a nerdy corner I'm not familiar with. I also enjoyed the deeply loving relationship between our heroine Reagan and her sister Mona. However, the book is split between the contemporary romance and the story of the D&D game the main characters are playing and I felt like both storylines suffered from that split. There's key conversations with secondary characters that we don't get to see on the page and I really wanted both more fantasy world-building and moments between Reagan and Wesley to deepen their backstory. (Open door, medium steam.)

You win some, you lose some spontaneous bookstore discoveries

The Novices of Lerna by Ángel Bonomini

In the titular piece of this short story collection, a scholar receives an invitation to a mysterious institute governed by byzantine rules where all the other residents look exactly like him. In other pieces, men pine for vanished women, cafes appear and disappear on street corners, and characters wonder if they're all figments of another's imagination. This was one of my spontaneous bookstore purchases and alas, it was a less successful one. The title story is intriguing and atmospheric and some of the other stories are strikingly weird and eerie but some of them read more like thought experiments than fully-formed stories. And nearly every single female character is written as an object of desire and not a person.

Let me know about your June reading in the comments!

Currently reading: Small Island by Andrea Levy

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• We had a gorgeous weekend upstate, complete with farmers’ markets visits, sandwiches from the Corner Counter in Red Hook, and brown butter donuts from Mighty Donuts.

• Finally finding a SPF lip balm that I like, from UltraViolette, and investing in prescription sunglasses for long summer days.

• Being all in on this season of Love Island UK. I am extremely behind but I’m also valiantly avoiding the discourse and that’s been the perfect combination for me.

I must caveat all of this with the fact that I haven't yet read some of my most anticipated books of the year, including the new Maggie O'Farrell and new Kennedy Ryan. I’ve also been meaning to read more of Sherry Thomas's backlist for the last three months…At times, I’ve had a vague feeling that I’m not reading what I really want to be reading, despite the fact that I could very easily change this! So in the second half of the year, I’m planning to simplify my monthly reading challenges and take another look at how I manage my library holds. For the rest of the summer, I want to focus on reading from my overflowing shelves and use the library to get titles for my book club and one nonfiction book a month that piques my interest.

My reading goals for this year are:

1. Read one Women's Prize winner a month: I’m at five so far, including two of my very favorite reads from this year, and I’m planning on rounding out June with Small Island by Andrea Levy. This has been a resounding success and one of my best sources of literary fiction reads this year, alongside the Fiction Matters book club.

2. Continue my streak of averaging one nonfiction book a month: I’ve read six nonfiction books in six months, four and three quarters of which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. (You could easily skim the 1990’s and 2000’s sections of Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller and be thoroughly satisfied.) I’ve largely been approaching nonfiction through other readers’ recommendations and I’ve appreciated having that extra layer of screening before I pick up a particular title.

3. Read books by authors from 20 different countries: So far, I’ve read books by authors from nine different countries. (Denmark, Italy, The Philippines, Cyprus, India, South Africa, Ireland, France, and Argentina.) I’ve mostly been approaching this project by finding something in a bookstore that looks interesting and this has worked about 50% of the time? Of course, reading books that I don’t like can be illuminating but I’ve found that so far, the international literature I didn’t enjoy as much mostly reaffirmed what I know about my reading taste. It might be time to add an extra layer of curation to this reading goal…

4. Embark on more reading projects: I’ve discovered that these work best when I give them both a time limit and a specific number, like reading four historical romances set outside 19th-century England last month. I love when the books I read are in conversation with each other and I already have plans for a July of sci-fi romance.

5. Be better about reading books when I purchase them and read my shelves: This is a bit of a mixed bag? I think I’ve gotten a little bit better at it but in the second half of the year, I’d like to tackle my shelves in earnest, both by weeding books that no longer appeal to me and by reading some of the titles that have been waiting patiently on my shelves for years.

6. Read more of the Vorkosigan Saga: I’ve read four novels and three novellas in Lois McMaster Bujold’s sweeping space opera series and although I fear it’s not the most fascinating content for me to gush about how much I enjoy the series each month, it’s the perfect dose of sci-fi in my reading life. I’ve been reaching for one of these whenever I feel myself teetering on the verge of a reading slump and want something to sweep me up and captivated.

7. Read more series: This goal has mostly been fulfilled by the Vorkosigan Saga, although I started The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion last month and have a strong suspicion that I’ll be finished with the series by the end of the year. I’ve also very much been enjoying Mick Herron’s Slough House series.

8. Read more older romances and classics of the genre: Middling results so far, I think? I’d like to prioritize reading more Sherry Thomas, Loretta Chase, and Cecilia Grant for the rest of this year, as well as a Mary Stewart novel or two and maybe another Nora Roberts. I’ve already adored reading Jeannie Lin’s Lotus Palace mysteries, discovering Cecilia Grant, and dipping back into Julie James. I know for a fact that my romance reading life is better when I read a healthy amount of backlist.

My favorite reads of the year so far:

• No Matter What by Cara Bastone

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

• The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn

• A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant

• Happy Ending by Chloe Liese

• The Jade Temptress by Jeannie Lin

• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

• Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian

• How to Be Both by Ali Smith

• The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

Let me know how you’re feeling about your reading life and some of your mid-year favorites in the comments!

Currently reading: And Then There Was the One by Martha Waters, an absurdly charming romantic mystery set in interwar England.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• I’m lucky enough to live in a restaurant with several excellent Italian restaurants and now I can add Provini on 8th Ave, and their stellar Parmesan creme brulee, to the list. I had the nicest dinner there with a friend this week, tucked into a corner booth.

• La Cage Aux Folles at City Center, with Wayne Brady and Billy Porter, which was a tremendous amount of fun.

• Checking two items off my NYC bucket list last weekend: a Major League baseball game and a visit to Coney Island!

I’ve described dozens of books that I’ve enjoyed as cozy, charming, warm, and delightful. I’m certainly not a reader who goes in for bleak or dark, most of the time. StoryGraph has classified nine books, of the 107 I’ve read so far this year, as “dark” in their mood tagging and I’m not even sure I would agree with some of those classifications! But when I think of the literary fiction I’ve loved this year, like Lincoln in the Bardo or How to Be Both, its warmth and empathy is balanced with a keen edge of loss. When I think of my favorite romances from this year, the very real possibility of heartbreak is always hovering in the background before their characters triumph in their happy ending. There’s friction. Something is at stake, even if it happens to be simply someone’s heart. (And really, as any romance reader knows, there’s nothing simple about the heart.)

I think that today’s genre fiction often swings between extremes: high stakes drama with brooding love interests where the fate of the entire world rests on the shoulders of one young woman with magical powers or a quaint small town with whimsical bakeries and bookshops where no one ever has a miscommunication or a third-act breakup. I’m wildly oversimplifying here, of course, but there seems to be a sanding down of the edges in a lot of genre fiction, often in the name of coziness and comfort. However, comfort doesn’t work without the reader knowing what it means for these characters to be uncomfortable and if everything’s easy, nothing feels earned.

I love T. Kingfisher’s fantasy novels, especially her Saint of Steel series, and I’ve frequently described them as cozy but they’re also genuinely unsettling. Paladin’s Grace gives us a sock-knitting hero, a series of mysteriously decapitated bodies, high-stakes court drama, and decent-hearted characters caring for each other in ways big and small. The lurking danger makes Stephen and Grace’s love all the more precious and their flaws and uncertainties make their decision to choose each other all the more poignant. I’ve discovered that I want peril and adventure in my fantasy, I want complications in my romance and even when I know everything is going to work out in the end, I want a moment—just a moment!—where I doubt it.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve had a similar experience with cozy genre fiction or if you’ve had any moments where you found yourself reassessing your reading taste lately!

Currently reading: One Night in Hartswood by Emma Denny, a m/m romance set in medieval England.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• I’m fully obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, a scream-sob of the agony and the ecstasy of being a young woman.

• We went to see Masters of the Universe over the weekend and it’s definitely a tad too long but it’s also campy, colorful, and blessed with the charm of Nicholas Galitzine.

• I had the loveliest birthday gathering last weekend, complete with sparkling rose, lots of cheese, and a truly decadent birthday cake from Ladybird Bakery in Windsor Terrace. It was the kind of evening that just had me feeling very grateful for all the fantastic people in my life.

A Gentleman’s Gentleman by TJ Alexander

A whimsical, wistful slow burn romance between an earl who prefers to keep himself away from society and his handsome valet who’s hiding a secret of his own. It's a quietly intense build between Christopher and James, one of gradual confessions, growing intimacy, and the wonder of knowing that you're no longer alone in the world.

Longshadow by Olivia Atwater

A magician teams up with an enigmatic street rat to investigate why the marriageable young ladies of London are mysteriously dying in this enchanting fantasy romance. Atwater’s writing has a fairy-tale cadence and vocabulary that I adore and I love how she pairs the magical feel with a sharp awareness of the injustices of 19th-century England.

Playing for Keeps by Alexandria Bellefleur

Two publicists fall for each other when their celebrity clients start dating. One of my favorite things about this sapphic romance is how wonderfully Bellefleur develops one character through the other’s eyes—it’s a perfect example of the power of third person limited POV. I especially enjoyed the peek behind the scenes of celebrity and the scorching chemistry between our heroines.

Copper Script by K.J. Charles

I could put any of the three Charles titles I’ve read since last summer in here but this romance about a buttoned-up detective and charming graphologist who join forces to solve a mystery in 1920’s London was the perfect introduction to her work for me. The banter, suspense, and character development are all top-notch and I love Charles' eye for precise, perfectly revealing character details.

A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell

Two former childhood nemeses team up to search for a hidden hoard of Viking gold. I’m a big fan of Lowell's thoroughly researched historical romances and particularly liked how she pairs an insightful dissection of the history of archaeology with a charming sunshine and serious f/nb pairing, graceful prose, and a quietly triumphant HEA.

Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian

Yes, I’ve already talked plenty about my love for this contemporary romance (Sebastian’s first!) between two feuding co-stars on a long-running sci-fi show of questionable quality. But it's so, so good. It's a funny, thoughtful, clutch your heart and sigh swoony depiction of two people figuring each other out and learning how to be together. And it has the very best mini dachshund.

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

In an island powered by story, a knight and a witch set out to rewrite their tragic love story. This sapphic romantic fantasy seamlessly weaves together an enemies to lovers romance with an epic struggle for the kingdom’s soul and features some of the best world building I’ve read in a fantasy all year. Simply spellbinding.

Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti

Rival Gothic novelists end up trapped in a possibly haunted manor together in one of my romance favorites last year from a new favorite author. Georgiana and Cat are obsessed with each other, even when—or maybe especially when—they're bickering and I’m equally obsessed with their love story’s verve, sparkle, and celebration of queer joy.

Thirty Love by Tom Vellner

If you're looking for something to read around the US Open, may I suggest this delicious tennis rivals romance? I was delighted by the globetrotting, insider-y look into the sport and how Vellner captures the infuriating, intoxicating blend of being annoyed by and wildly attracted to someone at the same time. As a bonus, there's an all-star supporting cast.

And here's a handful of queer romances on my TBR:

• The Duke by Anna Cowan, about a powerful aristocrat and the woman she once abandoned in Revolutionary Paris. (The drama!)

• Set Point by Meg Jones and The Open Era by Edward Schmit, for more queer tennis romances.

• It Had to Be Him by Adib Khorram, where a man who’s just been publicly dumped runs into a high school crush on a spontaneous trip to Italy.

• After Hours at Dooryard Books by Cat Sebastian, a historical romance set in 1960’s New York, because Sebastian’s mid-century romances are pure catnip to me.

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Currently reading: Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe, about a princess trapped in a bookshop. (The dream, honestly.)

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• My favorite chatty pop culture podcast, We’re Obsessed, going to twice a week! I love Jodi and Nora’s banter.

• Baklava ice cream from Malai in Cobble Hill, which would be a perfect stop in a Brooklyn book crawl.

• The return of my favorite summer treat, Love Island. I have yet to decide whether to commit to US or UK (leaning towards UK) but it's ridiculous and brings me much joy.

My May reading goals were:

• Four historical romances set outside 19th-century England: The Tribune Temptation by Jenna Bigelow, The Lotus Palace and The Jade Temptress by Jeannie Lin, and Slippery Creatures by K.J. Charles

• Everything on the Women’s Prize shortlist I hadn’t read yet: Dominion by Addie E. Citchens, Flashlight by Susan Choi, The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly

My June reading goals are:

• Three queer romances in three different genres

• Three historical romances set outside 19th century England

• The next book in a series

• And a Women’s Prize winner

Of my May reads, I already reviewed Happy Ending by Chloe Liese, which I loved, and all five titles I read from the Women’s Prize shortlist. But I have quite a few more books to tell you about so let’s get into it.

Favorites of the month

No Matter What by Cara Bastone

A couple grappling with the aftermath of a traumatic accident slowly find their way back to each other when Vin agrees to let Roz practice her figure drawing skills on him in this deeply heartfelt romance. Bastone excels at writing about difficult topics with humor, grace, and real warmth. It feels like what happened to these characters is a natural part of their story, instead of trauma piled on just for the sake of it, and the way she writes about grief and healing is beautifully sensitive. Yet Roz's voice is so chatty and charming and conversational that the sadness never overwhelms and the stubborn hope here always shines through. These are rich, real characters and I loved how thoughtfully Bastone writes a strong and silent hero who's actively learning to communicate better. It's also a gloriously New York-y book, from the cast of characters in Roz's drawing class to key scenes in Central Park, and a gorgeous reflection on the process of making art. (Open door, low steam.)

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volumes 1 and 2 by Beth Brower

The year is 1883 and Emma M. Lion has finally returned to her eccentric London neighborhood of St. Crispian’s and her home of Lapis Lazuli house. But her plans for a quiet life of study are threatened by her aunt’s social schemes, her eccentric cousin, and the dramas of the neighborhood. Everyone who told me I would love these was absolutely correct. They’re warm, slyly funny, charming, and cozy without ever being overly sweet and I adore the mostly indomitable Emma. There’s also a slight magical element that I found wonderfully whimsical, including a Roman ghost (!) and a tendency for people’s possessions to go wandering in St. Crispian’s. These remind me a little of I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith or The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery and I can’t wait to continue with the series.

The Lotus Palace and The Jade Temptress by Jeannie Lin (The Lotus Palace Mysteries #1 and #2)

In both of these wonderfully atmospheric historical romances set in Tang Dynasty China, a mysterious death draws an unlikely couple together: a maidservant in the pleasure quarter and a highborn aristocrat in The Lotus Palace and a celebrated courtesan and stern constable in The Jade Temptress. Both of these are deeply romantic, beautifully written, and totally unique. I particularly loved how Lin vividly brings the world of the Tang Dynasty to life captures the inherent contradictions of the Pingkang li, where courtesans are trapped in their lives no matter how widely they're celebrated for their beauty and learning. These characters are rich and complex and wonderfully flawed, particularly Mingyu, the heroine of The Jade Temptress. There's a melancholy running through both of these books that makes the love stories all the more triumphant. Both relationships have plenty to overcome and there were moments when I genuinely didn't know how Lin was going to get them to their HEA. (Open door, medium steam.)

Really liked

Borders of Infinity and Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold (Vorkosigan Saga #5.5 and #6? I think?)

Miles’ latest adventures find him disguised as a POW to infiltrate a brutal prison camp, dodging assassination attempts and juggling his various identities on Earth, and meeting his clone. I’d highly recommend reading Borders of Infinity, a short and gutting novella, before picking up Brothers in Arms, a zippy and quippy sci-fi adventure full of peril, banter, double-crosses, and a surprising amount of poignancy as Miles considers his responsibilities to his clone. Watching a deeply intelligent protagonist solve problems is one of my favorite literary pursuits and this series delivers that in spades. Brothers in Arms also features an excellent amount of the smart, capable mercenary captain Elli Quinn. If you like space opera or like me, spent large amounts of your formative years watching Star Trek, I’d highly recommend diving into this series.

Slippery Creatures by K.J. Charles (Will Darling Adventures #1)

After returning from World War I to an England that would rather forget about his sacrifices and inheriting a used bookstore from his uncle, Will Darling is caught in a web of danger and mystery and deeply drawn to the charming, shifty aristocrat Kim Secretan. Note that this is the first of a trilogy and Will and Kim’s story is not done by the end of it! Charles puts on a master class in writing in third person from only one of the main characters’ POVS—it’s fascinating to watch Kim shift through Will’s eyes. I also enjoyed the pulp novel influences, how Charles crafts the inescapable sense of a country still healing from its years of war, the subtle details that bring both Kim and Will to life, and the supporting characters, particularly Kim’s fiancee Phoebe, who I would read an entire book about in an instant. (Open door, high steam.)

If This Be Magic : The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation by Daniel Hahn

Hahn takes us on a tour around the world, through history, and through the many challenges of translating Shakespeare, alongside a cast of talented translators, in this work of nonfiction that gladdened my Shakespeare-loving heart. Hahn celebrates both the genius of Shakespeare and the genius of translation and gets delightfully nerdy about language. Whether he’s talking about prose vs. verse, how to do English regional accents in an entirely different language, or how to make the mechanicals’ terrible verse in A Midsummer Night’s Dream equally terrible and equally funny in German (possibly my favorite chapter in this book!), he writes with enthusiasm, precision, and a deep love for the art of translation. Highly recommended for both Shakespeare and word nerds.

Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee

In a world run by computers and dedicated entirely to pleasure, a rebel grows tired of the endless parties of her caste of hedonistic teenagers and begins to search for meaning--and threatens to unravel the very foundations of her world. This wildly imaginative slice of the future is overdue for a renaissance. Lee drops the reader right into this wild world and lets us figure it all out through some clever world-building and a short glossary included at the front of the book. There's dream palaces, body swapping, meal injections, six-legged pets, and a desert lurking outside the artificial bubble of each city. Our heroine is smart, stubborn, idealistic, and riven with many of the typical torments of being a teenage girl. I was also fascinated by how ahead of its time this novel is in how it talks about gender and sexuality, in a society whose citizens go between male and female.

The Close-Up by Kennedy Ryan (Hollywood Renaissance #1.5)

A basketball player and a makeup artist have one unforgettable conversation on a roof while they were teenagers, only for the tragedy that befalls her brother to come between them, and then get a second chance at love as adults on a yacht cruising the Mediterranean. This fun and sexy novella was the perfect appetizer for Score, the second book in Ryan's Hollywood Renaissance series. I really enjoyed Takira's confidence and presence, Naz's total adoration for her and readiness to make her feel cared for, and how powerfully Ryan writes the attraction between them in both the past and the present. (Open door, very high steam.)

Just A Little Dinner by Cécile Tlili

In an overheated, exhausted Paris, two couples each hiding their own secrets meet at one of their apartments for a dinner that promises to change all of their lives. This is a slim novel that makes the most of every page, evoking its characters in carefully chosen detail. Tlili perfectly captures the oppressive heat and pressure of late summer and I particularly enjoyed how physical this book feels. The domestic details are especially excellent, from the sleek apartment that leaves no room for the shy Claudia in its rooms or in her relationship to the appetizers that rapidly wilt as the characters argue, assess, and seek to conceal their soft spots from each other.

The Halifax Hellions by Alexandra Vasti

Margo Halifax sets out to rescue her twin from an ill-advised elopment, assisted by her brother’s best friend, only to find that said best friend has been secretly pining for her and that Matilda’s relationship with the brooding marquess is not quite what it appears. These novellas about a pair of rebellious twins and the starchy, secretly soft men who fall for them contain numerous delights: elopements, scandalous prints, mysterious castles, carriage crashes, and one very cranky cat. I love Vasti's swoony and sparkly style so much. There's plenty of hijinks and a sly sense of humor but the emotional beats here land with real weight and sincerity and she also happens to be excellent at writing physical and intellectual chemistry. A treat to read from start to finish. (Open door, high steam.)

Thirty Love by Tom Vellner

American tennis star Leo Chambers is on the verge of greatness and the verge of thirty, if he can only figure out a way to stop being losing to--and stop being distracted by--his cocky, handsome rival Gabe Montoya. This tennis romance swept me up into the excitement of the sport, bringing each of the Grand Slams alive in evocative details and making me feel like I was right there along with the crowd. There’s a lot of details about the sport itself that are immensely fun and give an insider-y peek into the sport. Vellner also nails the infuriating, exhilarating sensation of being irritated by and incredibly attracted to someone at the same time. The focus is more on Leo than Gabe, as it’s told through third person limited, but I was delighted by their love story anyway. I also loved the friendships and Leo’s complicated but ultimately loving relationship with his dad. (Open door, low steam.)

Spellstruck by Martha Waters (releases September 29th)

The owner of a magical speakeasy and a government agent tasked with enforcing the ban of magic must team up when magical cocktails begin having unintentional side effects. This magical rom-com is as sparkling and effervescent as a glass of enchanted champagne. Vesper is my favorite kind of romance heroine: confident, glittering, flirty, and sneakily confident. Her narrative voice had me charmed on the very first page and it was a pleasure both to watch reserved Max be won over by her and to watch her give in to her feelings for him. They're a perfect sunshine and serious pairing, as they banter, investigate a series of magical accidents, and slowly open up to each other. The world that Waters creates is incredibly fun, especially as she brings each of the magical members' clubs to life, and is full of 1920's flair. (I'm very much hoping that she writes more in it!) There's also a great cast of supporting characters in the form of Max and Vesper's families and one extremely good, very fluffy cat. (Open door, low steam.)

Liked, with minor quibbles

The Tribune Temptation by Jenna Bigelow (Roman Heirs #1)

In the Roman Republic, an ambitious politician held back by his status as a freeman offers a marriage of convenience to a senator's daughter shamed by society after her divorce. Bigelow weaves a wide array of details of ancient Roman life into the story with enthusiasm and aplomb, from wedding customs to gladiator games to elite dinner parties, and crafts a heroine who's enjoyably cool, reasoned, and a little bit spiky. I did feel a little cheated of a proper third act grovel, when the hero's actions definitely merited it, and questioning why the heroine wound up being the one groveling. Otherwise, though, I found this to be a fun, quick read that had me intrigued about the rest of the series. (Open door, medium steam.)

Dearest Beast by Felicia Grossman (Once Upon the East End #3, releases June 30th)

Months after an ill-advised one-night stand, midwife Rebecca and influential merchant Roger find surprising common ground and a renewed attraction when they’re stuck together in his house over the winter. My favorite aspect of this romance set in London’s 19th century Jewish community was the rich historical background, sense of community, and cultural elements Grossman weaves into every aspect of the novel. I also really enjoyed Roger's evolving relationship with his children, Rebecca's fierce intelligence and independence, and her deep friendships with other women. It's been quite a while since I read the first installment in this series so I did struggle to understand exactly where all the animosity between Rebecca and Roger sprang from, as well as the source of their initial physical attraction. I also think if a romance starts with a steamy one-night stand, that one-night stand needs to be on the page! However, I bought into their romance more and more as the story went on, they began to open up and reassess their initial impressions of each other, and the world of the novel expanded with the introduction of more supporting characters. (Open door, medium steam.)

The Chateau on Sunset by Natasha Lester (released June 2nd)

A cinematic take on Jane Eyre set at the legendary Chateau Marmont that gives its Jane an adventure of her own, takes a keen eye to the cruel way that Hollywood and its powerful men treat young women, and crafts a love story with a brooding hero who still has plenty of heart. The Marmont is just as much a character as any of the people that populate this pages, in all its glittering, dangerous glory. The love story between Aria and rock star Theo Winchester simmers with tension and longing but this is fundamentally a story about Aria and the women in her life. I especially liked her complicated friendship with aspiring starlets Callope and Flitter, and the vein of sisterly love that runs underneath it, and her renewed relationship with her aunt. (I also found Theo and his daughter Adele's relationship really touching, which is perhaps the first time I've ever thought that in a Jane Eyre retelling! But the way that trust and affection slowly builds between them is so lovely to read.) I did think that this was occasionally a little heavy-handed in its themes but I was still deeply invested in Aria's fight to protect the starlets chewed up by the Marmont and tell their story.

Liked just fine

The Dove and the Rogue by Harper St. George (Doves of New York #3)

A scandalous American heiress determined to make her way as an opera singer and the rakish British aristocrat who's been pursuing her since she first arrived in London embark on a marriage of convenience. I read this without reading the first two Doves of New York books and think I missed out on a lot of the build-up but I still enjoyed watching David woo Jenny and Jenny valiantly struggle against her feelings. The steamy scenes do a nice job of deepening the chemistry and connection between them and I found the historical details about opera and late 19th century entertainment particularly interesting. However, the pacing does rush through some of the big emotional beats and I really wanted more yearning and pining on both sides, as well as more build-up to the two of them consummating their marriage. I love a marriage of convenience and this didn’t quite measure up to my favorites. (Open door, high steam.)

Currently reading: The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn and it’s so good.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• Cats the Jellicle Ball on Broadway. Cats itself is still a deeply baffling musical to me but this radical reimagining is a fantastic night at the theater.

• The rose garden at the New York Botanic Garden, which is about to reach full bloom and absolutely luscious.

• We went to a ceramics fair in Brooklyn this past weekend and I am now the proud owner of the cutest witch-printed ring dish and gorgeous ceramic wine glass from Caitlyn Chavez. (We just barely resisted the dinosaur mugs!)

My feelings on Heart the Lover remain mostly the same as they were when I read it last November. I still love the parts that I love, particularly the intoxicating quality of King’s writing and her ability to convey intensity of emotion, and I still have mixed feelings about the way this connects to Writers and Lovers. Of all the books on this shortlist, this is the one that had me the most invested and, even with my mixed feelings, I wouldn’t be mad if it won.

Here’s what I thought of each book on the shortlist, in alphabetical order:

Flashlight by Susan Choi

Louisa's father disappears when they go out for a walk along the beach at night and the effects of that fateful night echo down generations of their family, from her father's childhood as a Korean in Japan to his unhappy marriage with her mother to her mother's illegitimate son Tobias’ search for meaning. This is an exceptionally well written novel full of deeply miserable characters. The sheer line-by-line craft on display is fantastic, from the unexpected imagery to the sentence structure to the way Choi reveals bits and pieces of the family's story like she's shining a flashlight over a darkened room. There's a particularly amazing passage where she describes how Louisa goes from outsider to fitting in at her Japanese school that had me in awe at its fluidity and originality. However, all three of our main characters are unhappy and angry for 450 pages, which made this a bit of a challenging read for me. I found myself reading more for the craft and to see how Choi was going to pull all these disparate threads together than because I wanted to spend time with these characters. If you're a prose or craft-focused reader, I think you might love this. I also have a feeling this family epic might be this year’s winner, especially after it was shortlisted for both the Booker and the National Book Award and if the committee leans more on the excellence and originality aspects of the award’s three criteria.

Dominion by Addie E. Citchens

The sins of the most powerful family in a small Mississippi town are revealed when their idolized youngest son's acts of violence begin to catch up with him. Told through the perspective of the two women in relationships with charismatic but cruel Winfrey men--the preacher's wife Priscilla and teenager Diamond--Citchens chronicles cycles of patriarchal violence, crises of faith, and the challenges of escape. This is quite well written, especially when it comes to depicting gender relations in this small town and the grip the charismatic and cruel preacher Sabre Winfrey exerts over everything there. Even the smallest social interaction is deeply telling. However, so much happens in the span of less than 250 pages that no individual plot point gets room to breathe and the big moments, when they finally come, feel somewhat anti-climactic. It felt overstuffed and while I admired a lot of the line-level writing here, I would have swapped this out on the shortlist for Audition by Katie Kitamura.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

An elderly woman writes letters to everyone in her life, including those she confides in, those she argues with, and those who can no longer answer. This deftly threads the needle of being warm and sweet without ever tipping over into overly sugary, helped along by Sybil’s crisp, matter-of-fact narrative voice. It’s a thoughtful and lovely reflection on life, legacy, loss, and new beginnings. Sybil jumps off the page through her letters, as do so many of the supporting characters, and I so enjoyed the epistolary storytelling. It's a charming and wistful story that also happens to be steeped in bookishness and it's easy to see how it became a smash hit for legions of readers. I will say that I went into this with very high expectations, after hearing from so many fellow readers how much they loved it, and while I liked this a lot, I wasn’t blown away by it and I’m still trying to pin down why. (Please let me know in the comments if you felt similarly!) I do think this might win, if the prize committee leans in a more popular direction, and that it would be a fun pick.

The Mercy Step by Marcia Ann Hutchinson

A young girl who escapes her deeply troubled home life through books and the power of her mind grows up and grows into her own in the north of England during the 1960's and 1970's. I loved Mercy, her determination to make her own way, and her ever curious mind. There's some particularly lovely passages where she first discovers the imaginative powers of reading and Hutchinson captures a child's perspective with subtlety and nuance. Mercy sees certain things so clearly, like the danger her volatile and violent father poses to her entire family, while other things are beyond her understanding (but not the reader’s). This novel was also an interesting look at the challenges of the Windrush Generation and a rapidly changing Britain. I would definitely recommend checking the content warnings before picking this one up. So many bad things happen to and around Mercy that I did find myself hoping rather desperately for something to go her way. There was a point where I found myself wondering how the pile of tragedies pushed the novel forward and if they reiterated its themes instead of deepening them.

Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly

A young queer academic haunted by his difficult childhood becomes obsessed with a famous colleague, a renowned poet whose life and affection he covets. This slim novel was a pleasant surprise and my favorite discovery from the shortlist. At first, it felt very much like something I’d read before, especially in Kelly’s use of spare, straightforward prose that reminded me of Sally Rooney and the love triangle the novel seems to be turning on. (I yearn for lush, rich, complicated sentences in literary fiction but that’s another newsletter altogether.) However, as the book goes on, it morphs into a story of friendship, love, and caretaking that delicately charts a set of tangled power dynamics and that I ultimately found quite moving. Kelly writes about the small details of grief and the everyday duties of care in a way that feels deeply lived-in and wonderfully observed. I also loved the friendship between our unnamed narrator and his best friend Jess, which may be the deepest and truest love in the novel.

And two titles from the long list that I’d still like to read:

• The Best of Everything by Kit DeWaal, which comes highly recommended from the FictionMatters community.

• The Others by Sheena Kalayil, about three friends in 1989 in East Germany and a messy love triangle.

Let me know if you’ve read anything from the Women’s Prize shortlist and what you thought!

Currently reading: The Jade Temptress by Jeannie Lin, which is excellent, particularly if you’re looking for a historical romance with very real obstacles to the characters’ HEA.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• I am deeply into Off Campus. I haven’t finished the show yet but it’s reminding me of the CW dramas I spent most of my formative years obsessed with and the chemistry on screen is just perfection.

• Some really good classic brick oven pizza from Giuseppina’s in Park Slope, in a cozy dining room where we could see the oven burning away at the back.

• I went to see Schimgadoon last weekend, which is a candy-colored confection that you might also enjoy if you’re a fan of Golden Age musicals and media that joyfully sends them up. The second act opening tap number alone is worth it.

Thea and Alex meet when their exes start dating each other immediately after their respective divorces…and impulsively lie about being old friends and first loves. Two years later, they’ve become best friends, albeit the kind that a lot of their friends and family are convinced are dating. But when their exes invite them on a beach vacation, they find themselves finally faced with the yearning that’s been building between them for years.

I read Happy Ending at the very beginning of May and have been thinking about it ever since I’ve always enjoyed Liese’s writing—and this was the perfect reminder for me to finish the Bergman Brothers series this summer—but this book feels like a step up in her writing, like a story she simply had to tell. The author’s note at the front of the book talks a little about her own experience with divorce and how she finally felt ready to explore it in her writing. Every single sentence here is deeply felt and there’s an ache to this story, sunshine-bright and glorious as Thea and Alex’s happy ending eventually is, that resonated with me deeply.

The love here feels all the more hard won for the loss that came before it and while this is a deeply tender and soft book, it’s also keenly aware of the ways that we can hurt each other, both when we do and don’t mean to. Neither Thea nor Alex came away unscarred from their previous relationships and both have things to work through before they can start something new. I especially liked how thoughtfully Liese writes about the complexities of Alex’s relationship with his ex-wife Jen, who he shares a daughter with. One of my favorite quotes from the novel comes when Thea’s reflecting on their respective pasts: “Maybe, when it comes to telling the stories of our failed relationships, the wounds they inflicted, there are only unreliable narrators, too much hurt warping our perspectives, thwarting any chance to land on the truth of what went wrong”. There’s a grace and a nuance here that made this book feel all the more real to me.

One of my favorite things about Liese’s novels are their rich secondary casts and we get a beautiful friendship between Thea and her force of nature best friend Lauren here too, as well as the relationship Thea builds with Alex’s daughter Mia. As a bonus, there’s an extremely good dog. It’s also a surprisingly lovely portrait of Pittsburgh, the city that neither of its main characters chose but that they come to love in their own way anyway. The sections set during their beach trip are equally lovely, soaked in summer and salt air. (If you can bring this book to the beach, you absolutely must.) Liese’s writing is vibrant and especially shines when it comes to capturing her characters’ rich inner emotional lives. She’s so good at writing about feelings and in her hands, an inner revelation feels as huge as a cinematic grand gesture.

Of course, the center of this book is the love story and it’s a good one. If you’ve been looking for more yearning in contemporary romance, look no further. Happy Ending overflows with yearning and pining and two people who are madly in love with each other and just the tiniest bit scared of it. There are late-night heart-to-hearts, emotionally charged cuddling sessions, and at least one tension-filled near kiss. This is my kind of friends-to-lovers romance, an achingly slow burn, and I devoured every single page of it. Alex might also be my favorite hero that Liese has ever written? There’s a passage where he’s run over to Thea’s house when she needs him, dressed in his raggedy house clothes because he didn’t stop to change, and admires her wall of bookshelves…true romance hero behavior. He’s far from perfect yet he’s perfect for Thea and I found the ways that they care for each other through one of the hardest seasons of their lives to be truly, sincerely swoony.

Recommended this if you want to be transported to the seaside, if you’re looking for a warm embrace of a book, or if there’s a severe lack of pining in your life. This was exactly the book I’d been craving, at the time I wanted it most, and I can’t wait to see what Liese writes next.

Currently reading: Speaking of slow burn romances, No Matter What by Cara Bastone, which is excellent so far.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• Dinner at Antidote in Williamsburg, especially if you get the smoked duck fried rice.

• We went to the best concert celebrating Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life at BAM last weekend, courtesy of both the fabulous orchestra bringing the album to life and the wildly enthusiastic audience.

• It’s summer reading guide season! I spent my lunch break today perusing both Sara Hildreth’s Paperback Summer Reading Guide and Michelle Martin’s All Things Summer Reading Guide and already have a list of titles I can’t wait to dive into this summer.

1. Start keeping a notebook of favorite quotes

   I’ve never been a big annotator but I do like to occasionally flag a sentence or passage and I’d like to do something with all those page flags. What better use for my abundance of notebooks than as a commonplace book? I’d especially like to start doing this with quotes that I love and particularly beautiful lines from romance novels. Romance’s line-level prose gets a lot of flak and true, sometimes it’s simply there to get the job done. But sometimes it’s fabulous and I’d like to celebrate that.

2. Stop saving the best for last

   I’ve definitely told this anecdote here before but as a child, I used to read my library books in order of projected enjoyment, going from least to most. I still find themselves putting off the books I’ve been looking forward to the most, waiting for either the perfect moment or a time I really need them, convinced that they’ll be better if I precede them with titles I’m less sure of. But I want to coax myself into the habit of letting go a little and enjoying things when they come to me. I’m starting this month by setting a firm mini TBR of contemporary romance: Happy Ending by Chloe Liese, No Matter What by Cara Bastone, Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai, and The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn.

3. Read more chonkers

   This year, I’ve read two books that are over 500 pages. Yet I have a big soft spot for a long book, whether it’s a sweeping family story or fantasy with three pages of maps at the front. I love being completely swept up in a story and I love a book that takes its time and lets its plot and characters breathe. So I have my eye on two big, floppy paperbacks this summer: The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif, a cross-cultural love story set in turn-of-the-century Egypt, and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, a stand-alone epic fantasy novel that I’ve had recommended to me multiple times. I want dragons, I want drama, and I want a book so big that I have to keep it flat on my lap while reading.

Let me know about your summer reading goals in the comments!

Currently reading: The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, my third title from the Women’s Prize shortlist.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• I finally saw The Devil Wears Prada 2! It’s stylish, fun, sharp, and full of devastating quips and gorgeous clothes.

• We went to Krupa Grocery in Brooklyn for my boyfriend’s birthday and it was the perfect neighborhood restaurant dinner. Make sure to get the risotto balls and chocolate peanut butter tart if you find yourself in Windsor Terrace.

• Being oh so close to finishing this draft of my current writing project…I’m in the zone where it’s fully invaded my thoughts and I can see the HEA in its full cinematic glory.

It’s a reminder that the new release table isn’t everything, that there’s a lot of readers still catching up on the buzzy books of a few years ago, and that there’s people going their own way and picking up titles that I’ve never heard of before. And subway readers may be more inclined to proudly display literary fiction than other titles, but I really loved seeing how many people on my morning commute were reaching for something rich and thematically dense. I see a lot of people reading: on the subway, in the park, perched on a bench in lower Manhattan, sprawled underneath the cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden…and I’m excited to see what they’re reading every single time.

Children’s

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich: I still remember being emotionally wrecked by this book, my very first Erdrich, as a child.

Classics: These titles have everything, from two classic novels set in New York City to a comedic masterpiece that I would highly recommend (Cold Comfort Farm) to the hardy soul who has the presence of mind to concentrate on Proust on the subway. I salute them.

Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Contemporary fiction: I love seeing Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow still going strong four years after its release. It’s a reminder that, no matter how fast the new release flywheel turns, there’s still readers discovering and devouring the books that everyone seemingly read years ago.

All That Life Can Afford by Emily Everett

This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Fantasy and mythology: I have a theory that fantasy isn’t quite sure where to settle after swinging all the way to grimdark in the 2010’s and then into cozy and romantasy in the 2020’s and I think the fantasy novels I’ve seen in the wild kind of bear that out? I didn’t see any fantasy new releases and I’m curious to see if something becomes a huge book of the moment the way that Babel did in 2022.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone

Babel by R.F. Kuang

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett (gorgeous UK edition that I immediately coveted!)

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

Historical fiction: Kind of accidentally the celebrity book club selection section? I have an entirely unscientific feeling that a lot of successful historical fiction is a celebrity book club pick.

Isola by Allegra Goodman

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Horror: Here, I must salute another brave soul who decided, in the depths of a miserable New York City winter, to pick up The Shining.

A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez

The Shining by Stephen King

Literary fiction: Perhaps I’m slandering other cities but spotting this many people reading literary fiction on public transit feels very New York to me. We have Nobel winners, trendy translated literature, tragic tomes, and representatives from many a Booker or National Book Award shortlist. I also have a feeling that The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is assigned reading for some NYC high schoolers, based on the number of times I’ve seen it around town.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Writers and Lovers by Lily King

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

The Lesser Bohemians by Einear McBride

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

The Colony by Annika Norlin

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk

A Little Life by Hana Yanagihara

Mystery/thriller: People are still reading Verity, even if the larger Colleen Hoover frenzy seems to have died down, and I suspect there’ll be another uptick once the movie comes out in the fall. I do wonder if this is a genre that people are more likely to read on an ereader—where tragically, I can’t snoop!—or on vacation where they won’t be rudely interrupted by their subway stop.

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

Verity by Colleen Hoover

Nonfiction: Patrick Radden Keefe reigns supreme. I also find it interesting to see what nonfiction endures, like the Anthony Bourdain and Audre Lorde titles on this list, which are 20-plus and 40-plus years old respectively, and which fade away over time. I don’t always write down the self-help books I see because it’s not a genre I’m particularly interested in but I do see waves of the self-help guru of the moment come and go.

A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain

Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Joyride by Susan Orlean

Romance: I’ve seen a lot of book industry chatter that romantasy is flagging but I also still see people reading Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros every time I assemble one of these lists. On a much smaller scale, I was overjoyed to see Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck, which I really loved, out in the world.

Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake

Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

The League of Gentlewomen Witches by India Holton (with copious page flags!)

Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

Wild Card by Elsie Silver

Bitterburn by Sierra Simone

Phantasma by Kaylie Smith

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Sci-fi: The power of a movie adaptation comes through with both Dune and Project Hail Mary sightings. According to my boyfriend, Dune has become required reading for a certain type of nerd-adjacent man.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

A Dungeon Crawler Carl book by Matt Dinniman whose title I couldn’t quite make out

God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

YA: Maybe it’s the sappy millenial in me but I am glad that somewhere out there on the subway, someone is still crying over The Fault in Our Stars, the book that once left me severely dehydrated on an airplane.

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Let me know about your favorite recent book sightings in the comments!

Currently reading: Flashlight by Susan Choi, from the Women’s Prize shortlist.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• The Ragtime Tiny Desk Concert. I love whenever Tiny Desk has the cast of a Broadway show and this one is just perfection. Give Joshua Henry his well-deserved Tony!

• Middle of Nowhere, the new Kacey Musgraves album. She veers back into country much more here than on her last two albums and I’m very into it.

• And getting to reminisce about the absolutely essential role that Sarah Dessen played in my high school reading life when I picked up my copy of her new book (!) on a rainy Wednesday.

This April was also when I decided to read exclusively queer romance for a month, with one exception for my romance book club pick. I found some gems and found it so refreshing to read some contemporary romances where there was more fluidity in the main characters’ dynamic. (I sometimes want to ask readers who complain about the sameness of contemporary romance if they’re reading any queer romances and then press my favorites upon them.) However, I also miscalculated slightly because this meant I couldn’t read the new Kate Clayborn immediately upon release. Of course, I make the rules for my reading challenges and this means that I can break them…but it didn’t feel in the spirit of the challenge.

Another big change in my reading life this month was that I finally got an ereader for ARCs (advanced reader copies) from NetGalley and older romance novels that the library only has in ebook format. I’m hoping to eventually start publishing interviews with the authors of romance novels I love, so watch this space!

My April reading goals were:

• A novel featuring a female athlete: Backhanded Compliments by Katie Chandler

• Two books I received from Aardvark Book Club, as the Leaning Tower of Aardvark titles continues to terrorize my living room: Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier. I didn’t get to a second title and the Leaning Tower of Aardvark continues its reign of terror.

• An anticipated release from the first three months of the year: Kin by Tayari Jones

• And a Women’s Prize winner: How to Be Both by Ali Smith

My May reading goals are:

• Four historical romances set outside 19th century England

• And to read the five titles on the Women’s Prize shortlist I haven’t read already.

Favorite of the month

How to Be Both by Ali Smith

The stories of a 15th-century Renaissance artist and grieving 21st-century teenage girl twist around, intersect, and mirror each other in this dazzling helix of a novel. This is a book that’s moderately intimidated me for ages, mostly because of the sentence fragments it opens with, but about thirty pages in, I fell in love. Smith’s writing is funny, compassionate, playful, creative, and positively radiant. I love the way that this book writes about art, especially the transcendent experiences that can come from viewing it and how Smith takes us inside the mind of someone who sees the world as a painting. It’s a story of love thwarted and returned, of friendships, of creativity, of mothers and daughters, and of the ways that people live on through their art. Just a really beautiful book.

Really liked

A Gentleman’s Gentleman by TJ Alexander

The Earl of Eden, a "man of unusual make" who prefers to keep himself and his secrets away from society, is forced to hire a distractingly handsome valet who may be hiding a matching secret of his own. This was such a lovely slow-burn: wistful, funny, the tiniest bit whimsical, and ultimately brilliantly hopeful. I loved how carefully Alexander builds the tension between Christopher and James, stretching every moment out until it shimmers with feeling, and how beautifully they portray the wonder of meeting someone who shares your experiences when you've thought yourself alone in the world. The narrative voice shines and the line-level writing sparkles. I bought the follow-up, A Lady for All Seasons, immediately after finishing this. (Open door, low steam.)

Ethan of Athos and Labyrinth by Lois McMaster Bujold

This month in the Vorkosigan Saga, I picked up a stand-alone novel about a doctor from an all-male colony tasked with retrieving genetic materials for future generations and a novella that plunges Miles into the chaos and corruption of Jackson’s Whole. These felt more like side quests in the larger saga but I love how Bujold gives us both novels where the fate of thousands hangs on Miles’ shoulders and Star Trek-esque adventures featuring a teenage werewolf. These are funny, thrilling space adventures and I especially adored Elli Quinn, the savvy mercenary who plays a major role in Ethan of Athos and who I very much hope returns to the series.

So It Grows by Andie Burke

The proprietors of neighboring businesses team up to defeat plans for a parking garage that threatens to ruin both their businesses in this heartfelt slow-burn friends to lovers romance about the power of community, the slow process of healing, and the joy of finding someone who loves every part of you. I really enjoyed the chemistry and banter between Felicity and Nic--their back-and-forth crackles with energy and there's so many soft and tender moments between them that deepen their connection. Burke writes thoughtfully about serious issues like addiction and trauma but balances those darker moments out with Felicity's snappy narrative voice and a deep sense of warmth and coziness. This releases in October so keep an eye out, especially if you’re looking for a m/f romance where both protagonists are queer. (Open door, medium-low steam.)

Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier

A gifted healer becomes the apprentice of the pope’s personal physician and is swept up in danger both when she becomes the queen’s midwife and when plague comes to 14th-century Avignon. This historical novel has everything: court drama, deadly disease, forbidden love, appearances from real-life historical figures, and sisterly bonds. I loved Elea, our dedicated and passionate heroine, and the powerful bond of respect and learning that she forms with her teacher Guigo, as well as the love and loyalty she has for her sister. The writing is atmospheric and the pacing tight. I’d especially recommend this to historical fiction fans looking to branch out into the medieval.

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai

Tara returns to the slowly decaying house in Old Delhi where two of her siblings still live in this rich, subtle, and sometimes heartbreakingly sad story. Desai reflects on how our families continue to shape our adult lives, the long shadow cast on Indian society by Partition, and the net of loves and hurts that bind siblings together. The writing is both beautiful and unsettling, especially in its recurring imagery and the story spins back and forth through time effortlessly, blending past and present and slipping in and out of memory. This is a slow book that demands readerly concentration and thought and richly rewards it. One of my favorite FictionMatters book club picks.

Spook Street by Mick Herron (Slough House #4)

As the old spy David Cartwright slides into dementia, his grandson River must fight through a web of long-buried secrets and the slow horses try to find the culprits behind a shopping center bombing. This was funny, dark, and impeccably plotted. I tore through it in a day, absolutely glued to the page throughout hours in the airport, a two and a half hour flight, and an entire dinner. I especially like how Herron's writing balances sharpness and cynicism with something very human and how he's not afraid of deadly consequences-and to show how loss reverberates throughout the entire cast of characters.

The Fortune Flip by Lauren Kung Jessen

After a mishap with a fortune-teller and a winning lottery ticket, two strangers begin to wonder if their luck has been swapped in this charming NYC-set rom-com. This was fun but still has substance, especially in its examination of toxic positivity and complicated family relationships, and is an excellent example of a romance where most of the conflict comes from outside the central relationship. Logan is a true golden retriever hero, Hazel is appealingly prickly, and there's a real sincerity to their connection as they work together to handle everything that life throws at them. I was also delighted by how lovingly Jessen writes about New York City, from Chinatown festivals to Central Park boating to the backstage of Broadway theaters. (Closed door.)

The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne

I flew through this story of a journalist investigating the mysterious disappearance of legendary female comedian Lillian Martin in the 1980’s, told in an oral history style. All the characters' voices come alive, from the people who loved Lillian to the ones who only claimed to, and the pacing makes for an addictive read. Kelly and Thorne create a great piece of fictional media with the titular Midnight Show, which is obviously inspired by SNL but still stands on its own. (I love a fully-fleshed, lovingly detailed piece of fictional media!) I also loved the complicated friendship between Lillian and fellow comedian Gina that lies at the heart of the book. Smart, sharp, and eminently gulpable.

I’ll Have What He’s Having by Adib Khorram

After a steamy one-night stand, two men agree to a friends without benefits arrangement: David will help Farhan decipher the restaurant industry as he takes over his family’s bistro and Farhan will help David study for his master sommelier test. (They fall in love instead, obviously.) Every part of this book is vibrant and filled with love. There’s the love that develops between Farhan and David, of course, but also the love of family and friends, the love of a community, and the love of home. Khorram writes about Kansas City with such specificity and affection and I was delighted to get a less common romance novel setting. Friendship plays a prominent role in this book, both the ones that are thriving and the ones that need work, and the world of this book feels so rich and fully developed. As a bonus, the food and wine writing is luscious. (Open door, high steam.)

A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell

An archaeologist teams up with her now annoyingly appealing childhood nemesis to search for a hoard of Viking gold. Lowell's prose is witty, graceful, and finely honed and her Regency setting is carefully researched and vividly depicted. (Make sure to read the author's note!) I especially enjoyed how she unpacks the complicated history of archaeology. There's a warmth and depth to these characters and although it's written in third person, there's a distinct shift whenever we go from Elfreda's perspective to Georgie's that creates two vibrant character voices. The romance is a slow burn full of quiet moments, sparking attraction, and hard fought happy endings. (Open door, medium steam.)

Really liked but I have thoughts about some plot points

Kin by Tayari Jones

Two lifelong friends find themselves set on very different paths in the postwar South: one to Spelman College and the Black elite of Atlanta and one on a search for her long-vanished mother. I loved this sweeping novel's layered line-level writing and character development. There were so many sentences that I wanted to stop and savor and so many unexpected turns of phrase that work beautifully. The characters are made up of perfectly calibrated little details, as the way they move or speak reveals so much about each character. I both enjoyed this greatly and have conflicted feelings about the ending, which felt very expected in a book that had previously surprised me. I do think this is ripe for discussion and appeals to all kinds of readers, from those who read literary fiction regularly to those who dip into it occasionally, and I suspect it's going to continue to be everywhere.

Liked, with minor quibbles

Anderson in Bloom by Jennifer Dugan

Former child star Andy, now starting over as a florist in a small New England town, has her life turned upside down when her former costar--aka the ex who broke her heart--announces that she's writing a book and shows up in Andy's flower shop. This sapphic second-chance romance isn't afraid of the mess and I really liked how Dugan explores the challenges of breaking out of a toxic dynamic. There's a real ache in these pages and a huge amount of yearning on both sides. Even though we only get Andy's perspective, we know that Nikki is pining and it's easy to see both how they hurt each other and how they could be good together. There are some moments of broader comedy that I think don't fit with the overall angsty second-chance tone and I wanted to get more of the secondary characters but I was very in on the central romance. (Open door, medium steam.)

The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope

Four years after her sister vanished from her life and everyone else’s memories, Zahara goes searching for her, aided by a PI with secrets of his own. My favorite element of this 90's set fantasy was the innovative structure, as it blends Zahara's quest for Annica with tapes recorded by her father and her hacker sister's online activities. The magic system is fascinating and very well developed. I also found the sisterly bond at the heart of the novel so compelling and enjoyed seeing the sisters' love for each other in both the present and the past. What I wanted more of was Zahara's relationship to ballet, which is her lifelong dream but gets dropped almost instantly to find her sister in a way that didn't really make sense to me. There’s also a romantic subplot that felt underdeveloped in proportion to the significance it eventually takes on.

Like: A History of the World’s Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word by Megan C. Reynolds

This slim volume chronicles history and usage of "like", with a focus on its essential role in communication, the people who use it, and how it might evolve in the future, interspersed with personal anecdotes from Reynolds' own experiences with language. I found this interesting but a little repetitive at times, as Reynolds does make a lot of similar points about the role that "like" plays in modifying and gentling language. I did find the chapters about filler words in other languages and the evolution of the Valley Girl particularly engaging and appreciated the reflection on the evolution of language.

Somewhat more significant quibbles

Backhanded Compliments by Katie Chandler

Two bitter tennis rivals realize that they're soulmates, their names etched on each other's wrists, and fight their attraction as they battle each other on the court. I enjoyed the tennis setting and jet-setting vibes as the characters zip from tournament to tournament, as well as how well Chandler writes characters who are grounded in their bodies. Where this falters is with its speculative elements, which never get fully fleshed out and didn’t seem to add anything to the romance There's also a big supporting cast of other tennis players that all blend together. I found myself having to flip back multiple times to check who everyone was and wondering if we needed quite this many supporting characters. (Open door, medium steam.)

Oh, it’s complicated

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

On the planet of Pern, the Threads that once threatened life there haven't been seen for hundreds of years and the dragonfolk who defended against them are on the wane. But ancient dangers are about to reemerge and a young woman on a quest for revenge is about to forge a transformative bond with a dragon. Reading this was a bit of a roller coaster for me. I can see McCaffrey's fingerprints all over modern fantasy and parts of this do feel genuinely trail-blazing, especially in its depiction of a strong-willed heroine. The writing is great, the world fascinating, and the dragons truly memorable characters. However, its sexual politics are honestly upsetting: there's a lot of sexual violence taking place just off the page that the book just breezes past and the romantic subplot begins with a non-consensual encounter while never exactly making it clear when the relationship turns consensual. (Not to mention the fact that F'lar, our male main character, is constantly shaking Lessa and getting alarmingly physical with her.) The way that McCaffrey writes about some of the secondary female characters is also just nasty. Parts of this were truly mesmerizing but I'd hesitate to recommend it.

Let me know your favorite reads of March in the comments!

Currently reading: Thirty-Love by Tom Vellner, a gay tennis romance that is absolutely giving me Heated Rivalry vibes.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• Loaf on Paper in Williamsburg, an adorable stationery store and cafe that carries all the cat-themed items you could possibly want.

• The super sculpt yoga classes my workout studio just added, which are incredibly sweaty but so much fun.

• I met Emily St. John Mandel! The weather this Independent Bookstore Day was absolutely miserable but I ducked into Greenlight Bookstore for respite from the rain and saw that she was one of the local authors signing. I suspect that I word vomited very ungracefully about how much I love her books but it was such a joy to tell someone whose books I’ve been reading for years how much they’ve impacted me.

This week, I wanted to chat about five of my favorite independent bookstores and the best spots near them for a coffee, pastry, or savory snack.

Love and Legends (Brooklyn, NY)

This genre bookstore opened last fall and rapidly became one of my favorite bookish spots in the city. They have shelves upon shelves of classic and contemporary fantasy, sci-fi, romantasy, and sections for children's and YA genre fiction. I’m especially fond of their classics section, which overflows with sci-fi and fantasy classics, some of which I loved in childhood and some of which I was delighted to discover for the first time. It's also a gorgeous store with deep green walls, plentiful staff picks, and a papier-mache tree tucked into the back corner near their children's section. If you're a fantasy reader headed to NYC soon, you simply must visit.

And for your snacking options:

• Radio Bakery: Yes, you will have to wait in line. And yes, the Darjeeling morning bun and triple chocolate croissant are worth it.

• Prospect Heights Butcher Co: Home of big, beautiful sandwiches. I’ve also heard very good things about their lard chocolate chip cookies.

• Lisbonata: Gorgeously custardy pasteis de nata. Get a box of four with original, chocolate, salted caramel, and raspberry.

The Mysterious Bookshop (Manhattan, NY)

I may be wildly overconfident but there is a small part of me that believes I could solve crimes ensconced on one of the Mysterious Bookshop’s leather couches, with a little inspiration from its shelves. They carry all things mystery and thriller, including many signed first editions and an entire section dedicated to Sherlock Holmes. My favorite spot, however, is the shelf dedicated to reprints of 20th century crime classics and their extensive collection of titles from the British Library Crime Classics series. Want a suspicious cast of characters in a country house? Look no further.

And for a bite to eat:

• Takahachi Bakery is only a block away and carries an excellent assortment of sweet and savory Japanese pastries and lunch items. No matter what, get a sweet cheese puff.

• Frenchette Bakery makes beautifully laminated croissants, baguette sandwiches, and a decadently rich hot chocolate in the winter.

Book Club Bar (Manhattan, NY)

I dream of spending a whole summer day reading and writing longhand at Book Club’s bar, switching from tea to wine as the day goes on and pausing for a book browsing session or two. When the weather's good, there's a garden area in the back and their French doors are opened up to let a breeze in, people's conversations floating across. I feel like I see the most delightful cross section of New York City life every time I come here and I must recommend every single one of Lissa’s staff picks. (She runs the romance book club and has excellent taste.)

And for a wealth of East Village bakeries:

• Hani’s has my favorite chocolate chip cookie in the entire city, plus a superb smoked salmon focaccia, cinnamon bun, peanut butter and jam cake, and fudgy brownie.

• Librae Bakery: Everyone gets the pistachio rose croissant at this Middle Eastern/Danish fusion bakery and everyone is correct.

• Red Gate Bakery: If you happen to visit Red Gate on a Wednesday or Thursday, you’ll be greeted by the scene of cinnamon buns wafting down the block. Fridays and Saturdays bring special buns and cake, so you can't go wrong.

Oblong Books (Rhinebeck, NY)

Oblong is one of my two favorite Hudson Valley bookstores. (The other is The Merritt Bookstore in Millbrook, which is the coziest browsing experience and can be followed up with a trip to the Millbrook Winery.) It's just the epitome of a classic local bookstore, from its faint smell of ink and paper to its handwritten staff recs to the bookmarks conveniently placed near the register for impulse buyers that lure me in every time. They also always have at least one or two titles in their fantasy section that I haven't seen anywhere else.

And when you need a break from quaint small town shopping:

• Bread Alone: Get a sandwich, a sticky bun, and a container of grapes, grains, and feta salad for later and lead your life with joy.

• Gigi Trattoria: This is a proper restaurant, so it doesn't quite fulfill the snacking brief, but their Tuscan fries with little bits of crispy sage are simply divine.

Lovestruck Books (Cambridge, MA)

I visited this cozy romance bookstore when I was in Boston last year and was, appropriately enough, immediately lovestruck. They have a huge assortment of romance novels, along with some non-romance titles and a truly excellent gift selection. (I still regret not buying one of their adorable keychains.) There's also a cafe which turns into a wine bar at night, all the candles you could possibly want to sniff, and a warm, welcoming atmosphere that envelops you the moment you step inside.

And two of my favorite Cambridge spots:

• The Harvard Square branch of Flour Bakery, for gooey sticky buns, chopped Greek salads, Chunky Lola cookies, and maybe a slice of cake as a treat.

• Honeycomb Creamery is a little bit outside of Harvard Square but was my favorite ice cream spot while I was living in Somerville, especially if I got one of the handmade waffle cones.

Let me know about your favorite bookstore and bakery pairings in the comments!

Currently reading: A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell, a queer historical romance about former childhood rivals on a hunt for buried treasure.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• I’ve been listening to the Chess soundtrack a lot, which is the perfect way to enjoy the verbal pyrotechnics without having to ask myself if the plot makes sense.

• Unexpected Cheddar Snackers from Trader Joe's, the best little rounds of aged cheddar cheese.

• The current season of Below Deck Down Under, featuring my favorite Below Deck chief stew Daisy and a crew that seems very ready to create drama.

This week, I wanted to break down my most recent DNF and all the factors that led to me putting it down about 120 pages in. Some of them don’t even have much to do with the book itself, simply where I was in my reading life and what kind of mood I was in at the time. I’m very sure that there’s a perfect reader for this book. This month, it just wasn’t me.

The book: Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran, a Gothic horror novel about a group of girls at an English boarding school who turn to spiritualism to solve the mysterious death of their friend and find themselves trapped in an series of increasingly deadly supernatural events. I’m not a huge horror reader but I do like Gothic novels and I’ve liked some of Aardvark’s previous horror picks, like Hungerstone by Kat Dunn, so I added it to my box in March.

The reasons I DNF’d:

1. Horror is a genre that I’m super picky about. This is mostly because I am a wimp with a relatively low tolerance for gore and a strong preference for a happy or bittersweet ending. I do really enjoy Isabel Canas’ blend of historical fiction, horror, and romance and I love a Gothic novel with a big, creepy house so on occasion I’ll dip into the genre. Spoiled Milk, however, features a lot of vivid descriptions of rot and decay that had me wincing and a lot of child death, which I really don’t like reading about. (To be fair to the book, I definitely should have checked the content warnings!)

2. I’d just finished reading something that I had a lot of quibbles with and didn’t want to get stuck in a reading rut. I feel myself getting fretful sometimes when I’ve read a handful of books that I was only medium on in a row, convinced that my reading life is veering off track. Of course, a few books aren’t going to sink my reading year. But sometimes what I need is to sink into something that I’m very confident I’ll like and luxuriate in my comfort zone. When Spoiled Milk wasn’t clicking for me, I returned to my beloved historical romance with A Gentleman’s Gentleman by T.J. Alexander, which I loved.

3. The narrative made some stylistic choices that kept tripping me up, especially leaning heavily on foreshadowing. It’s told by an older Emily, our protagonist, looking back and it felt like she mentioned the terrible events to come every twenty pages or so. I love a bit of dramatic tension but when I’m reading a horror novel, I know that things are going to get bloodier, scarier, and all around worse and don’t need to be reminded. I do think this can work very well on occasion, like the prologue in The Possession of Alba Diaz where we know Alba’s going to stumble out of a cathedral screaming, wearing her wedding dress, and soaked in blood. But without a specific striking image like that, the foreshadowing felt repetitive, as did the pattern of scary inexplicable things happening, and didn’t have me hooked.

4. When I felt myself becoming reluctant to pick this one up, I went looking for reviews and discovered that readers who had similar issues to mine with the pacing wound up not being enamored of Spoiled Milk. I usually try to avoid reviews while I’m reading but I will occasionally consult them when I’m considering DNF’ing to see if other readers felt similarly and where they landed on the book if they finished.

5. And this was a book that I picked up more or less on a whim. It was an Aardvark pick, which means there was a certain amount of vetting, but this wasn’t a pick from one of my book clubs or a recommendation from a friend. In other words, I didn’t necessarily have anyone to discuss it with. I’m much more likely to push on with a book if I know there’s someone I’ll want to dissect it with, even if that dissection might involve a little venting. Spontaneous discoveries are a big part of my reading life and part of that is knowing that not all of them are going to be gems. I’m still glad I took a chance on one and the next time I’m in the mood for something creepy-crawly, I’ll have more information about what makes for a good horror read for me.

Let me know about the last book you DNF’d and why in the comments!

Currently reading: Kin by Tayari Jones, a sweeping story about two longtime friends I’m dying to discuss.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• I finally saw Project Hail Mary and it was a delight! Ryan Gosling is just radiating movie star charisma all over the place, the film is beautifully designed and shot, and I have never been more emotionally invested in a puppet in my life.

• Visiting a new-to-me bookstore, Lofty Pigeon Books, for their semi-annual sale and admiring their supremely excellent staff picks.

• And more cherry blossoms! This was the view in Green Wood last weekend and every sign of spring cheers me immensely.